The Legend
by Debt-Ridden-Sleeper
Summary: Sequel to The Remnant. Conny DeH just wants her second year to be normal, but when a magical painting theft happens before her eyes, she can't resist the trail of clues leading her into a hidden chase spanning between the planes of reality itself. Her friendship with Lucy is put under strain, and Gil Lockhart's obsession with Arthurian Legends may finally pay off...
1. Prologue

Hi all. Welcome to The Legend, sequel to The Remnant (If you haven't read The Remnant, which I highly recommend you should to properly enjoy this fic, you can find it on my profile).  
Here we see Conny, Lucy, Jon and friends/enemies enter their second year. I am very much more proud of this fic than I am of the Remnant. I should warn you though, as the category suggests, this is more of a mystery fic than an action/adventure fic. It made sense to be because the main characters are Ravenclaws.

As always, I do not own Harry Potter, and make no money from this fic. I apologise for any spelling/grammar/continuity mistakes I haven't managed to find.

And again, everything in this fic is canon or canon+ (ie, I have added in my own stuff, and made up what I like as long as it doesn't explicitly break canon.)

Prologue: The Closed Gallery

It was all, in Conny's opinion, rather dull.

Room after room of paintings; hall upon hall of statues, reams of marble busts and endless walls of squiggles that were, apparently, art. The air was full of dust and vaguely artistic poppycock. It was certainly no place for two twelve-year-olds.

Yet Conny DeHayersae and her moody French friend Jonmarc Lucwitt were there anyway. They were stood in front of a square of pink canvas that had been titled 'Mort de l'avidité matérielle', which, Jonmarc reliably informed his English companion, translated as 'The Death of Material Greed', though it made little sense in either language. Conny sighed, crossed it off the little guide book she'd picked up on the way into the gallery, and walked to the next painting.

She really wished they were outside; Conny and her family were in Paris for the last two weeks of summer, staying with Jonmarc's family, both of whom worked for the French Wizarding Embassy. It had been David, Conny's father's, idea to take them to this art gallery- La Galerie Fermée- to take up the day. So far, it had been a thoroughly unconvincing experience.

"Jon, I'm bored." She complained as they wound their way through the crowds. "How long until we get picked up?"

Jonmarc checked his watch. "An hour."

"Circe." Conny swore, slipping around a rather rotund gentleman in a plaid suit. "What are we going to do for a whole hour?"

Jon affected a look of searching surprise. "We could… look at ze paintings?"

"Look at paintings? In an art gallery? Jon, that's the silliest thing I've heard, ever."

"Sillier than- 'Oh, Jonmarc, Lucie, zere is a Death Eater in 'Ogsmeade making students zombies who wants to kill me, please 'elp!', non?"

Conny scowled at him. "That wasn't silly, that was life-threatening."

"Still." He said, slinking around the corner into an exhibit on landscapes. "Oh, zis one is nice."

He pointed to a large canvas in the corner of the room. It was a winter scene, an oil painting, and strangely… beautiful. Wiry trees framed the piece, mantled in thick, blue snow cast in golden light. Far in the horizon, a castle city rose to the sky, built in smooth, white rock, banners fluttering crimson.

The two children came to a stop in front of it, craning their necks to see the painting. "You're right. It's… amazing."

Conny spared a look down at her guide leaflet. "They don't know who painted it. Apparently it was found in England and ended up here..."

"Eet's… eet feels like it 'as 'istory. Like zere's a world behind ze frame… beautiful. Probably ze only appealing English artwork I 'ave seen." Jon said.

"What about all the portraits at Hogwarts? They're pretty special." Conny said.

Jon made a face. "I don't deny zat zey are good, but must you insist on always painting ugly people?"

"You're no Pete Burns yourself." Conny said lightly, though it was unlikely he'd get the reference.

Jon gave her a questioning look, and the moment his eyes left the painting, there was an explosion.

Jon grabbed her hand as they flew with a crunch into a painting on the opposite wall. A plume of smoke erupted as part of the roof caved in, leaving rubble clattering about on the floor. Conny coughed and sprang to her feet just in time to see a dark figure moving in the murk.

"_Flip_-" she was halfway through a spell, her wand whipped from where it was tucked into the waistband of her skirt, when she froze and remembered that she was in a muggle gallery, and if she used magic, she'd be breaking the wizarding law.

Being inherently quite crazy, Conny charged into the cloud of plaster dust with her hands in front of her. She hadn't gone a metre before she bumped into a tall, black-clad figure.

Conny tackled him, despite being half his size and a quarter of his weight, feeling his muscles tense. He reached for his wand as he elbowed her in the stomach. Conny sprawled backwards onto the floor, winded, clutching for purchase. The man wheeled around, took a glance at her, and then barked something she didn't understand. In a sharp throb of blue-yellow light, the man disappeared.

The dust cleared and the painting was gone.

Conny scrambled up and blinked, making sure she'd really seen it. A wizard had just stolen that painting.

She took a step back and realised that something was clutched in her hand. A fat scrap of torn black cloth was stuffed in her sweaty fist. She examined it curiously, finding it of outstanding quality, with a thin, spidery pattern lancing across it- and there, at the centre, detailed in tiny silver thread, was a rearing dragon-like creature. She frowned, pocketed it, and grabbed Jonmarc's hand as they fled the scene.

Once they were outside in the sunshine, it seemed as though the painting theft could have been a dream, but the dust on Conny's jumper said differently.

"What on Earth happened?" Jon asked as they sat in a café across the road, watching the muggle police swarm the gallery.

"I've no idea." Conny said, sipping a chocolate milkshake thoughtfully. "Why would a wizard want to steal a painting?"

"It was a good painting." Jonmarc pointed out. "And many wizards are _collectionneurs _of fine art."

"But if wizards kept turning up and nicking muggle art, we'd hear about it more often."

Jon shrugged. "Je ne sais pas."

"Well, this time, I'm leaving it as a mystery. Likely looking into it will put me on the hit-list of yet another Death Eater." Conny said, unaware of the comic froth-moustache on her upper lip.

"Good idea." Jon laughed, observing the police. "Zey are not going to find anything, are zey?"

"Who, the muggle police?"

"Oui."

"I don't think so. It's not like wizards to leave fingerprints. I wonder what kind of cover story the Ministry will put out."

"Ceiling cave-in." Jon said confidently. "Zat was what eet looked like from where I was."

"Mm." Conny said, stirring her drink. Her summer so far had been a wonderful breather from the danger and chaos that had seemed to dog her through all of her first year at Hogwarts. She flexed her muscles, feeling the skin on her back pull taut. The long, raised scar that ran from one side to the other felt like a rope being pulled to straining point. She'd received it from seventh-year Gryffindor Quidditch captain Douglas Ohsem during the dueling competition organized by Professor Killory last year. Well, tell a lie, nothing had been as it seemed. Avery, a crazed Death Eater trying to change a prophecy about the Boy Who Lived- Harry Potter, was controlling Douglas. Professor Killory had been an agent of the ancient Coteriate, an organization that had its headquarters in a mirror of Big Ben and sought to stop people meddling with the future.

And then there was Conny herself. The things she'd done had been heroic; though sometimes she felt she'd done them for the wrong reasons. She'd gone along with Killory's crazy plan to save her own neck. Avery had seen her meddling and tried to kill her. She honestly hadn't cared that much about saving Bill Weasley, Avery's number one target, though she had anyway. It felt a bit bad- to have done all those things only for herself, but it wasn't like she'd had a choice.

This year, however, Conny wasn't planning on doing anything of that caliber. She was going to take it easy, get excellent grades, and take up chess.

She pocketed the scrap of cloth and waited for her father to pick them up.


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter One: The Tuyau and the Thief

On August 30th, Conny was sitting in the departures lounge of the Calais Tuyau, reading the Daily Prophet while waiting for Jonmarc's parents to get off work.

_MUGGLE PERPATRATOR IN MAGIC PAINTING THEFT DEBACLE_

Conny's eyes widened and she turned her attention to the article, which was in the International News section of the paper.

_The British Ministry of Magic today have received a statement from the French __Ministère de la Magie concerning the apparently wizard-perpetrated theft of a painting from the La Galerie Fermée, Paris, on August 22nd, which to the surprise of the wizarding community, has been returned._

_The man in question who returned the painting has been identified as a muggle by the name of Méprise Maufoi. The painting has been returned to the Gallery and Mr. Maufoi has been arrested by the Muggle authorities, pending trial for theft._

_As for the nature of the theft, which was previously thought to have been carried out by magical means, a team from the French Ministère are carrying out a discreet investigation, though this is not expected to turn up any leads._

Well, Conny thought, at least the uselessness of the Ministry of Magic seems to be universal and not just contained to Britain. She carefully folded that piece of paper and stowed it in her pocket next to the scrap of cloth. Not that she was investigating or anything.

The large double doors opened on the other side of the departure lounge and Henry and Madéline Lucwitt strode in, Henry pulling Jonmarc's trunk behind him. They saw the DeHayersae family and waved warmly, coming over to sit with them.

"Sorry about that wait." Henry said in his booming American voice. "It's chaos at the Embassy- a hundred different foreign newspapers bayin' at the door."

"As eet always is." Madéline said tiredly. "It was a nightmare to get ze day off."

"So we ought to get going." David checked his pocketwatch. "Ah, we're up."

With a small whirring sound, the red lights above each of the hundreds of small holes in the wall turned green, and the population of the departures lounge collectively closed their papers and grabbed their briefcases. Conny followed her father towards holes 44 to 50. She'd used the Tuyau to get here, but it still turned her stomach to imagine having to use it again. Sighing, she tucked her top in and clambered into the hole.

"All witches and wizards are reminded to keep their hands and feet close to their bodies and carefully stow all loose effects before launching. Thank you for travelling on the Tuyau today."

This was of course in French, though Conny caught snatches of it, having been taught French twice a week by Jonmarc all of last year. She sucked in a breath and braced herself.

With a lurch, she felt her body being sucked through the tube. She didn't know exactly how the Tuyau worked, but it was basically a huge lattice of pipes below the Channel. Witches and wizards who couldn't or didn't want to apparate the distance from France to England took the Tuyau because it was convenient and quick- quicker than brooms, at least. The problem with apparating over an ocean is that bits of you tended to get lost, and when these bits fall into the water, there's no was of getting them back. The further the apparition, the higher the chance of splinching, and quite often people didn't want to take the risk.

The Tuyau was actually quite boring, but luckily it took no longer than five minutes to get from Calais to Folkestone. By the time she could see the light at the end of the chute, she was itching to stretch her legs.

Now, being lighter than the average adult by some twenty kilograms at least, the amount of force which pulled Conny through the chute was perhaps disproportionate to her size, and at the end, she popped out of the hole with a massive _phwoop! _Landing on her bottom, she grunted and dusted herself off, standing up. Surely there would be a bruise there tomorrow.

Beside her, Jonmarc burst out and landed with a similar _kerplumpf _on the carpeted floor and swore in French. David, Elizabeth, Henry and Madéline stepped out of their chutes with practiced ease and regarded Jonmarc, who still had his arse in the air. He scrambled up and went pink.

"Well, I rather enjoyed that." Henry said as the two families made their way out of the small building that housed the overground part of the Tuyau. "Damn shame they're closing it down."

David nodded. "Well, the muggles are starting to build a big tunnel in '88, so we have to go through the whole trouble of stopping service, caving it all in… sometimes the Statute of Secrecy is just plain irksome."

"Oh, trust me, you haven't heard the half of it." Henry said, "The French magical community are on the verge of revolt. There have been record amounts of muggle-baiting since Géderic announced it."

"It lost poor Millicent Bagnold a lot of popularity, too." David said.

"Not to take the muggle viewpoint," Elizabeth said, "But it's going to be a brilliant boon to the muggles of both countries."

David was about to grumble something about the fact that they weren't the muggles of both countries, but Elizabeth was. It had been hard for her, as a muggle allowed to know about the immense multifariousness of the wizarding world but unable to fully enjoy it. Then again, she loved David, and that was all that mattered.

"Thank god we can floo now." David said as they filed into a pub called The Warlock. He waved at the barman, a tall, dark fellow used to hundreds of wizards coming into his pub a day to floo from Folkestone to London. As was customary, David put three sickles per person into the jar on the mantelpiece and took a handful of floo powder.

"Diagon Alley!" He said, disappearing into the green flames. Conny hated using the Floo Network; she felt that wizards hadn't quite grasped the muggle idea that travel was meant to be relatively comfortable. She knew that carpets were meant to be must easier on the buttocks, but the Ministry had banned them two years ago, much to the anger of the wizarding community. David had owned a flying carpet, which he much preferred to a broom, before this change, and would gladly swear at Arthur Weasley and the meddling Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office if the subject arose in conversation.

Elizabeth and Madeline went together, because muggles couldn't Floo themselves. Henry encouraged the two children to go next.

"We ain't got all day." He said as Conny paused, floo power in hand, gathering her resolve.

Sighing, she stepped into the fireplace and said, very loudly and clearly, "Diagon Alley!"

With the disconcerting feeling of having your inner organs sucked out through your bottom, Conny disappeared in a flash of green flames. She tucked her elbows in and tried desperately not to be sick as she spun around faster and faster. Ash accrued on her nose and between her lips, an unpleasant taste, and with a juddering stop, she stepped out of the fire in the Leaky Cauldron, sneezing and coughing.

"Oh dear, Conny, you're covered in soot- here- _evanesco!_" David vanished the black off her clothes with a wave of his wand. Jonmarc stumbled out of the grate a second later, bumping into Conny and causing her to nearly fall over. They cleared a space and last of all, Henry Lucwitt strode out, brushing soot off his impressive mop of ginger hair. Jonmarc had once told her that he was glad that he had auburn hair like his mother, rather than ginger like his father. Conny agreed; it would be difficult telling him apart from Bill Weasley if that was the case.

"Right," Henry said as they strode into the back alley. "Aw, Dave, I just thoughta something. A year ago exactly we met you guys at this very spot, isn't it?"

"Why, I suppose so." David chuckled. "How time has flown, eh?"

"That's one truth." Henry said, smiling his lopsided grin. "Now… two up and three across from the trash can, right?"

"Dustbin." David corrected quietly. Some Americanisms just didn't sit well with him. "But yes, that's right."

Henry took out his wand- a long, thick, handsome mahogany baton with little stars on the handle, and tapped the correct brick. Before them, the wall began to rumble and slowly Diagon Alley was revealed in all its splendour.

Conny had been to Diagon Alley several times before, but it never failed to take her breath away. Today, with the summer sunshine arching down to dapple the long, sandy cobbled street, everything gleamed and glinted like fresh paint. Everywhere was packed, with witches and wizards swarming in and out of shops that sold everything imaginable, from Warts in a Bottle to broomsticks that broke the sound barrier. Ahead, Gringotts Wizarding Bank was dazzling, its white stones reflecting the sun like a giant diamond sculpture.

"C'est toujours belle." Jonmarc said under his breath.

"Isn't it just?" Conny agreed, her eyes drawn to a very familiar face running out of the crowd towards them. "Lucy!"

"Conny!" The tiny Egyptian girl launched herself into a hug. Behind her, two dark men that Conny recognised as her older brothers struggled to catch up through the crowd. "I didn't know you were getting school stuff today!"

"I would have sent you an owl, but I only found out we were coming yesterday." She answered as Lucy gave Jonmarc a hug too.

"Ah. Oh, these are two of my brothers." She pointed to the two men. "That's Jahnen, and the other is Ali. Alexi couldn't come- apparently he got into a bit of trouble for hexing some muggles who were using all his street's water for their kids' paddling pool."

Conny nodded, stopping herself from instinctively blanching away from the two tall, dark men. Jahnen was large and bulky, wearing a cloak so dark green that it appeared black unless the light hit it. Ali was thinner, but muscly, with thick, dark eyebrows almost concealing shifty eyes. He seemed to blot out the sun. They came up behind Lucy to flank her like bodyguards.

"What are you up to now, Lucy?" Jahnen asked, eyeing the DeHayersaes and the Lucwitts with suspicion.

"These are Conny and Jon, my friends, and their families." She explained. Conny saw that both Henry and David looked a little scared. Bravely, Henry held out a hand to the two brothers.

Ali took it and shook with a short, sharp motion that looked painful. "Pleasure to make your acquaintance. Ali Ra."

"Jahnen Ra." The men all exchanged handshakes with a strange tension.

"You can go now; if you give me the money, I can shop with Conny and Jon." Lucy said.

The brothers looked uneasy. "Don't you both have important appointments to keep?"

That seemed to get them. Jahnen deposited a bulging pouch of galleons into Lucy's hands and they bade her farewell, dissapparating on the spot. With their departure it was as though the sun had come out from behind a cloud.

Lucy seemed not to notice the effect that her brothers had on people, and happily started chatting, taking a scrumpled letter out of her pocket.

"Looks like we need _The Illness of Iniquity: Diseases of the Dark _by Doris Atremidus for Defence Against the Dark Arts this year."

Conny pulled her own neatly folded list out to confirm this. "Also, The Standard Book of Spells, Grade Two. And I need some more phials and potion ingredients. I've broken all of the first and used up all of the second."

"Same." Jonmarc said.

"I'd like to buy a school scarf." Conny asked her parents, who nodded. "And Bach needs a scratching post or he'll go insane when I'm at school."

"Your cat already uses my bed-posts." Lucy complained as they entered Flourish and Blotts. "One of these days the whole thing is going to collapse on me."

"I'm sure Polly and Anna will rush to your aid should that happen." Conny said lightly. She and Lucy shared a look; they both knew what Conny was talking about. The other three Ravenclaw girls in their year attended to Lucy like servants, and were grossly jealous of the true friendship that Conny and Lucy shared.

Lucy was everything that a girl could wish to be; she was pretty, smart and powerful. Everyone liked her, except maybe that Welsh git Ralphus Crymge. She could get away with nearly anything. All in all, Lucy had the potential to be the most popular girl at Hogwarts.

But Lucy Ra had a dark secret that very few of the students that fawned over her knew. Lucy's eldest brother, Khai, was serving life in Azkaban- for murdering their parents in cold blood. Lucy's brothers were hoping to use her as a link to the student population at Hogwarts when she was old enough. They were criminals. Drug dealers, arms smugglers- if it was outside the law, then the Ra Brothers did it. Conny felt sorry for Lucy. She herself had free choice as to what her future contained- Lucy didn't.

Still, all was happy for the time being.

They bought their books and then popped into Madam Malkin's to buy Conny's scarf. The blue and bronze of Ravenclaw felt very right to her now. Conny had not had the slightest clue which House she belonged to when she'd jammed the sorting hat onto her head last year, but she found that Ravenclaw suited her perfectly.

Conny stocked up on vials and potion ingredients at Tinkleman's Fragiles and Slug & Jiggers apothecary respectively. The group then split up, with The Lucwitts going to Gringotts to set up a savings account for Jonmarc, and the DeHayersaes and Lucy to the Magical Menagerie for a scratching post for Conny's cat, Bach. She owned an octopus, too, named Elgar. She'd used one of her father's school-day spells, _Cephalosortia_, to defeat the Death Eater Avery earlier that summer. It summoned an octopus from… somewhere. Usually someone was around to vanish them, but she'd kept Elgar because he'd fallen from the sky and knocked Avery out cold. Professor Killory had kept Elgar in a tank in her office, but he'd since been moved down into the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom, into the corner next to the grindylows.

She picked out a small but sturdy scratching post for Bach, and they met back up with the Lucwitts at Leavenloaf's, David's favourite bakery. The smell of melting chocolate, rising pastries and loaves of freshly baked bread rolled in waves of olfactory pleasure out into the street, so you smelled Leavenloaf's before you saw it. Finus Leavenloaf, the owner, was a large, jolly wizard with no hair but a surprising blonde moustache that seemed to transcend the laws of physics. He bustled about behind the counter, and one could see into the bakery proper behind him, where several white-clad bakers manned an army of large ovens, or rolled baguettes, or charmed the chocolate into croissants. On display were fat, squashy currant buns that eyed customers shiftily through their tiny raisin eyes; millionaire shortcake that oozed caramel everywhere- edible medieval meringues, which at the moment were hosting a furious jousting tournament astride marzipan horses. Stacks of cookies, wobbling precariously, lined the walls, while doughnuts whizzed around like discuses.

They found a table out in the sunshine, though the trade-off was that they constantly had to duck the gingerbread horseshoes that a group of young wizards were trying to throw to land around a tall, thin pole atop which was a flag bearing the Leavenloaf emblem- the loaf and the rising sun.

The mothers munched through biscuits and coffee while the fathers enjoyed a pint. Conny, Lucy and Jonmarc flicked through _Diseases of the Dark_, examining what kind of material they would be covering with their new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. It seemed that they never stayed longer than a year, unfortunately- Conny had really rather liked Professor Killory, the Healer turned Psychomancer turned time-policewoman who'd taught them last year.

They ended up discussing Jonmarc's eyesight.

"Jon, trust me, I had your eyes last year- you need glasses." Conny was saying. Indeed, when she and Jon had switched faces to confuse Avery, she'd gotten a chance to see just how appallingly longsighted Jon was.

"I don't want zem." He said huffily. "I can do everything just fine, thanks."

"I'll fix it for you!" Lucy said, rolling her sleeves up and taking her wand out. Jon yelped and shielded his face.

"Don't." Conny lowered Lucy's wand with her palm. "That kind of magic is way beyond even you, Luce."

"Spoilsport." Lucy stuck her tongue out. "That's because it's healing, right?"

"Yup." Conny nodded. Healing was probably the most difficult magic there was, and you didn't want to get it wrong, or someone could actually die. Luke Niall, a prefect who Conny knew in Ravenclaw, had told her that in the older years you learned to do things like heal grazes and cuts or soothe headaches, but not more complex that that.

As the afternoon wore on, the two families finished their shopping and were soon back in the Leaky Cauldron.

"Now, Jonny, you'll be good this year for us, right?" Henry said, his hand on his son's shoulder. "You'll send owls as often as possible, yeah?"

"Yes, papa." Jon said, going red.

"And you'll not break your mother's heart by nearly failing Astronomy again, okay?"

"Yes, papa." He said, mortified. Conny could empathise; she found a trip to the Astronomy tower about as appealing as being eaten alive by flobberworms, and her grades reflected this.

"And you'll be good to Mr. and Mrs. DeHaich for us while you're staying with them?"

"Yes."

"All right. Well, son, have a great year." Henry gave him a hug, and Madéline then slobbered big, motherly kisses all over his face while hugging all the air out of his lungs.

"Tu vas me manquer!" she sobbed in French to her son. Jon, now almost puce with embarrassment (the whole pub was watching), shook her off just in time to breathe again. Jonmarc took a hold of his trunk and a couple of other bags that belonged to him and bid his parents a final farewell. Henry and Madéline Lucwitt disappeared into the fireplace with an eruption of green fire and would soon be on the Tuyau back to Calais, from which they'd apparate- probably to Amiens, and then to Paris, to break up the journey a bit.

Jonmarc looked thrilled to see them finally gone. David offered to help with his trunk, which was bulky and heavy, as they exited the Leaky Cauldron into muggle London to begin their customary trip home. For Jonmarc, who was a full-blood wizard, the London Underground seemed to be an inexhaustible source of puzzlement and interest. When they crammed into the Hammersmith & City westbound service, Jonmarc suddenly figured it out.

"Eet's like the Floo network!" He said excitedly, with a leaflet-sized map of the whole Underground on his lap. "Except, eet does not go to each fireplace, just each area of London. Ah, I understand!"

David looked vaguely amused, and continued to be so as they got off the tube at Shepherd's Bush and bundled into a taxi. When they arrived at Conny's house, it was late afternoon, and the sun was casting everything in gold light.

"So zis is your house." Jonmarc said as they stopped on the pavement next to her gate. "92 Poet's Place, Maplehill, Shepherd's Bush, London."

"You know where I live?"

"How else was I supposed to address letters to you?" Jon asked with his eyebrows raised. "You forget zat not everyone lives at the Embassy."

"True." She shrugged and the four of them went inside. David turned the lights on and Elizabeth set the kettle to boil.

"Jonmarc, I've put you in the spare room." David said kindly as he returned from hauling Jon's trunk up the stairs. Conny thought it curious that Lucy could sleep in her room whereas Jon could not. "Tomorrow you need to make sure you've packed everything. Do you have any laundry that you need doing?"

Jonmarc replied to the negative and thanked David before going up to the spare room. He and Conny spent some time in the kitchen perusing the Standard Book of Spells, Grade Two, while Elizabeth made a sausage pasta bake for dinner.

"Why is Lumos in here? We've already learned it." Conny noted, flicking through chapter one. "Oh- there are variations, like Lumos Maxima and Lumos Duo."

"I suspect they'll be harder." Elizabeth said from where she was frying onions. Despite being a muggle, Elizabeth knew a bit about spells, though was not able to perform them herself.

"Oh, look- Spongify is in here." Conny went on. "Professor Flitwick saved me from a broken nose with that when I first met him."

"How?"

"A suit of armour tripped me up when I was lost on the way to breakfast." Conny remembered.

"That doesn't sound very safe." Elizabeth said, much to Conny's amusement. Compared to the rest of her first year, that incident had been nothing.

"Conny, zere's Diffindo as well." Jonmarc said, pointing to chapter five. "I've always wanted to use eet on all Ralphus's clothes an watch 'is face."

"You're barmy, Jon, he'd kill you."

"It would be worth eet." Jon said darkly.

Conny gave him a look and he lost the murderous look in his eyes. Jon was the only Ravenclaw boy who wasn't part of Ralphus Crymge's gang, which consisted of Feol Achstin, Lawrence Stannis, Derek Mothley and Gil Lockhart. Conny now understood why the normal number of students of each gender in each house per year was five- a sixth simply disturbed the balance of things. It was nice of Dumbledore to accept Jonmarc when his parents had asked if their son could come to Hogwarts instead of Beauxbatons, but the difference in numbers didn't quite fit. As a result, Jon spent most of his time with either the Gryffindor Mark Arrit, or with the girls, a fact that he despised.

"Supper is served!" Elizabeth announced merrily, drawing her ever-hungry husband to the table quicker than apparating. The four of them tucked into the massive pasta bake, and soon had devoured the whole thing. Conny found herself in the odd position on explaining how a television worked a second time to Jon, who, while not quite as ignorant as Lucy, was still freaked out by it. They watched a documentary about World War II and then, exhausted, went to bed.


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter Two: Back to School

It seemed as though the Hogwarts Express was going interminably slow, especially to Conny, who was wading through the copy of _An introduction to Runes and their use in Modern Paperbinding _by Turgeous Floris that she'd bought at the British Wizarding Literature Festival at Easter. The book itself was so heavy that she could hardly breathe when she rested it on her chest.

Lucy, as usual, had commandeered a compartment for the group; today, it was filled with Lucy, Conny and Jonmarc- the usual suspects- but also Gil Lockhart, who was surprisingly good at History of Magic and had his nose in a book about Arthurian Legends. Beside him sat a gaggle of Gryffindors (which, incidentally, is the correct collective noun), containing perky Scot Rosie McAvery, cheerful but dim Mark Arrit and Tilda Tirias, who really warranted no introduction.

Conny had never been sure about Tilda. The Gryffindor was doe-eyed and dozy, so much so that she often fell asleep in the middle of corridors or during lunch, but Conny was convinced that behind that, Tilda knew more than she let on. Then, there was the strange incident at the end of the Dueling Competition…

Speaking of that, Conny thought, now was the time to act. She pulled a tiny phial and cork out of her replenished supplies and placed the point of her wand to her temple. Frowning and concentrating, she focused on the memory that she wanted to isolate: what she now called Tilda's prophecy. It came to her mind, but before she could recall it, she forced it from her brain and through the magical conduit of her wand. The feeling was not dissimilar to swallowing a noodle, but it getting caught in your throat, and then pulling it out again. She pulled her wand away from her temple, and with it came a thin, liquid swirl of silver. She poked it down into the vial and sealed it before any could escape. She wanted to keep that memory safe; she knew it was important, but didn't trust herself to remember it properly. Professor Killory had first done this to her when they were escaping from the wrath of a man called the Tribune, who worked for the Coteriate, with her memory intact. She didn't exactly know what she was doing, rather the outcome of it.

"Conny, what on earth were you doing?" Mark asked, gaping at her.

"Nothing." She said quickly, stowing the vial.

"No. You just pulled something out of your head!" He insisted. Gryffindors and subtlety went together like oil and water.

"My hair?"

"No, it was silvery…"

"Mark, if she wants you to shut up, shut up." Lucy said irately, saving Conny from what would likely be a marathon session of lying and getting angry.

"Whatever." Mark said. "Oh, Lucy, are you trying out for the Quidditch team this year?"

"Do you even need to ask?" Lucy said, grinning. "I'm going for chaser. You?"

"Seeker. Since Douglas left, I reckon I've got a good chance, seeing how useless Riall Twining is."

The whole compartment giggled; the image of Hufflepuff Seeker Orville Kinch rummaging around in Riall Twining's boxers for the wayward golden snitch had been forever etched upon their memories. Lucy turned to Conny. "You are trying out with me, right, Conny?"

"I'm no good, you know that." Conny complained. "And besides, Aren Moss will take over for Georgia Dawson this year- he's been on the second team long enough- and there's no way I'm better than him."

"That's only for Keeper, though." Lucy said.

"Keeper is the only thing I'm ever going to actually manage." Conny pointed out.

"True." Lucy grinned as Conny gave her a playful shove with her socked feet. She bumped into Gil, who growled from inside his book. Lucy snatched it off him and levitated it into the air with a flourish of her wand, out of his reach.

"Hey!" He shouted, grasping at it furiously. "Give it back!"

"Watcha reading?" Lucy asked, twirling the book around in the air. "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight."

"Lucy, give it back!" He said. "That book's really old!"

"I'm not blind, arse." Lucy said. "Why the sudden interest in reading, Gil? I thought you preferred to copy other people's work."

Gil went red. It was well known that he had a complex about not being smart enough to be in Ravenclaw. "I may copy work, but then, you'd know all about stealing, wouldn't you, Lucy?"

A brief flash of disdain crossed Lucy's face, but was quickly replaced with her easy smile. "Too right, Gil. Tell me, why not just cast a quick spell to get your book back?"

Gil reached to his back pocket for his wand and found it missing. He looked up and Lucy, who was twiddling it around her fingers, smirking.

"You pickpocketed my wand!"

"And your wallet, and your gum." She said, letting each item slip from inside her sleeve to the seat beside Gil. "You should be more careful with your things."

She offered his wand out to him. Gil snatched it back and pointed it at his book. Lucy remained standing and lowered her wand so that Gil could get his book back, smiling, while the whole compartment waited with baited breath.

Conny knew that Lucy was a cruel person. She'd known ever since Lucy had introduced Corfax, a chubby Hufflepuff boy, as 'Fatty' when they'd first met on the train last year. Lucy was controlling and sly; she knew how to play people. If you're too fun and relaxed, they start to take liberties. If you're too strict, they'll rebel. Lucy knew the rules of the underworld.

Conny privately thought that made her infinitely scarier than a Death Eater.

The Honeydukes' employee who always brought a trolley of sweets down the aisle arrived as they passed Tebay, and Conny bought a packet of her favourite Curiously Tasty Fudge. Though the tension had diffused slightly in their compartment, Gil kept stealing worried glances over at Lucy, who looked to be having a nap. They changed into their Hogwarts uniforms as night fell, and Conny was surprised again at how much she'd grown. She'd have to buy new robes before her third year, that was for sure. She just hoped she didn't end up too tall; it didn't do for ladies to tower over men. Then again, most girls towered over Professor Flitwick, so there must be exceptions.

"Hullo there." A familiar face stuck his head around the door. It was Luke Niall, now a seventh-year. He was light-skinned, with floppy brown hair and bright blue eyes, and Conny decided that she definitely fancied him a bit.

"Hey, Luke." She said. He moved into proper view and she saw a shiny new badge glinting on the lapel of his Ravenclaw robes. "Head Boy?"

"The very same." He grinned broadly, very pleased with himself. He looked as though he could barely refrain from squealing with joy. "And Quidditch Captain, too."

"No way!" Lucy said, waking up from the nap she wasn't actually taking. "Awesome! You'll let me on the team, then, yes?"

He chuckled. "If you're any good, sure."

"Score!" Lucy did a little victory dance.

"Try-outs are the second week of term, on Thursday afternoon." He said. "Will I be seeing you there, Conny?"

She blushed. "I'm no good at Quidditch. Lucy's been telling lies."

"Nonsense! Come along either way! There's no shame in not getting into the squad first time. It took me until my fourth year."

"Really?"

"Truly. You just have to practice. I don't mind putting a few hours in here and there, if you'd like." Conny would very much like that.

"Sure!"

"Brilliant. I'll see when I have some free time, and we'll make a date." He winked and left them. Conny remembered with a sinking feeling that Luke and his girlfriend Ally were practically inseparable. Oh well, she thought; there are other fish in the sea. She wasn't even thirteen yet.

As the train carried on northwards, Conny felt a familiar apprehension settle in her stomach. Perhaps she hadn't quite gotten over the fear- the quite appropriate fear, considering last year- that Hogwarts wasn't safe. She stared out at the mountains, covered in downy green and purple heather, dyed pink by the fading autumn sun.

"Stop thinking." Lucy flicked her on the forehead painfully. "You get this worried granny face when you think."

"Granny face?"

"Sort of like this." Lucy made a gross face. "It'll be fine. Trust me."

"Trust you?" Conny said, eyebrows raised. "You nicked all our silverware last time you came to my house."

"I put it back before I left." Lucy pouted, flipping a galleon between her fingers. "Oh, are we slowing down?"

Indeed, the train did appear to be losing momentum, and the sky was now dark as the sun dipped behind the tall mountains that obscured Hogwarts from the rest of the world. Conny picked Bach up from where he was snoozing on the luggage rack and emerged into the corridor, wanting to get off the train as soon as possible. She'd experienced the crazy crush of students that spilled out of the train the minute it came to a stop in her first year, when she'd nearly been trampled.

With the screech of the breaks, the Hogwarts Express finally came to a halt on the platform and prefects began manically lunging for doors. Conny lined up behind a Hufflepuff fifth-year prefect who looked strangely caught between explosive pride at being a prefect and horror at the rising tide of students approaching the door like a stampeding herd of bison.

The doors clunked and opened with a plume of steam and Conny slipped out across the platform, Lucy and Jon close behind her. They came across a platoon of the strange horseless carriages that ferried students from the platform to Hogwarts, and hopped in. Mark joined them to make to numbers up and all by itself the carriage started to move. Conny looked over her shoulder at the nervous first-years who were standing dumbly around the massive brown-coated form of Hagrid, the gamekeeper, who was holding his lantern high in the air and shouting for them to follow him down to the dock. With a flush of joy, she remembered her first view of the Hogwarts castle as they rounded a corner on their little boats on the Black Lake. It was beautiful.

The sight lost nothing from the second viewing, though it was from a different angle. Conny had to crane her neck back to take in the whole castle- today lined in the blue-purple of the last vestiges of the setting sun. The windows blazed like the flames of a hundred tiny candles. She gave a short, appreciative sigh… I was like coming home.

Once they'd finished the ride to the castle, the group of second-years filed into the Great Hall, finding seats on their respective House tables. The Ravenclaw table was packed, and looked particularly exuberant, due to the fact that they'd won the House Cup at the end of last year. Up on the staff table, Conny searched for familiar faces. Professor Killory was gone, and in her place sat a kindly, grandmotherly woman wearing lime green. Much to her dismay, Professor Snape was still present. She had secretly hoped that he'd died quietly over the summer.

The chatting quieted down, and Conny turned to see the nervous cohort of first-years shuffling down the central aisle behind the tall, imposing Professor McGonagall, who placed the sorting hat on its stool at the front. It's brim tore open, and for the second time, it began its song:

_And so the year has come anew,_

_And I must sing my song,_

_For students, teachers, many, few,_

_Who've waited oh so long._

_Just as brave Merlin held our art,_

_We must now hold it too,_

_To learn to use it wise and well,_

_For we are but a few._

_To some of us is gifted wit,_

_As Ravenclaw was graced,_

_With logic sharp and open mind,_

_To pass each challenge faced._

_Or Hufflepuff, who taught her ilk,_

_To prize what's just and true,_

_Hard work and charm to win the day,_

_To see their tasks all through._

_Perhaps of shrewd old Slytherin,_

_Your mind has turned to guile,_

_Whatever means to suit your end,_

_Are used with flair and style._

_You may belong to Gryffindor,_

_Be proud, and true, and brave,_

_Face trouble with unflinching strength,_

_With chivalry behave._

_So now I've told you of my use,_

_Just place me on your head,_

_I'll see just where your heart belongs-_

_Then we can all be fed!_

"We didn't look like that." Conny whispered to Jon, pointing at the pale, quivering group of eleven year olds as they clapped the hat's song. "I swear we had… expectant dignity."

"Trust me, you lot looked exactly the same." Boris Malasten, sixth-year Ravenclaw beater and bad-boy said from up the table.

They turned to see the sorting begin. One by one, the tiny first-years edged their way towards the hat, paler than some of the ghosts. "Allen, Graham!" went first, and was sorted into Hufflepuff, followed by "Arnold, Felicity!" (Gryffindor), "Cadwen, Padraigh!" (Ravenclaw. Conny clapped enthusiastically for him), and "Chambers, Sophie!" (An unpleasant looking girl who joined the Slytherin table with relish). As the sorting went on, Conny felt her attention wander, first to the ceiling, which was a beautiful clear blue dotted with stars this evening, then to the candles and the drapes. Appalled, she saw that the pair of rather nice pink socks that she'd thought she'd lost last year was hanging up as part of a sock-chain that was festooned from one gargoyle to another. Her stomach rumbled loudly as "Luft, Geraldine!" was placed in Hufflepuff, causing a low trickle of laughter from the people around her.

"Southerton, Clarence!" and "Teppit, Olivia!" were both sorted into Ravenclaw, and the only reason Conny realized this was that they came to sit either side of her. She looked to her left and right, schocked to find that Lucy and Jon had deserted her in favour of including her in a Conny sandwich. She sighed and looked at the two shell-shocked students, who were surveying the table with wide eyes. Inevitably, their eyes came to rest on her expectantly.

"Welcome to Ravenclaw." She said with all the pep she could muster. Her stomach rumbled again, though it could have been growling at the first-years. "How are you finding it so far?"

"It's so big." Olivia Teppit said wistfully.

"You'll find your way around quickly, don't worry." Conny assured her. "Though I recommend leaving ten minutes extra to get to classes because you'll be lost your entire first week."

"Really?" Clarence asked, looking suspiciously at the ceiling.

"Yup." Conny checked over her shoulder and saw McGonagall rolling up the parchment. "Shh, Dumbledore's about to speak."

Sure enough, he grey-bearded Professor stood, and in his special way silenced the whole hall without making a noise.

"Welcome to another year to Hogwarts," he said warmly, motioning to the castle in its entirety, rings glittering on his spidery hands, "Now, before we partake in what is sure to be a marvelous feast, I have a few start of term announcements to make."

"Ten sickles says that Filch has banned coloured ink, the grumpy sod." Boris said.

"I would like to remind first-years that the Forbidden Forest is, eponymously, forbidden."

Boris and his friend Sean elbowed each other at this statement, and, surprisingly, both Luke and Ally blushed at the same time, looking away from each other. Lucy made a disgusted face; the first-years remained oblivious.

"Following educational review by several of the Professors, students this year should use only blue or black ink in lessons and on homework assignments. Additionally, our caretaker Mr. Filch has asked me to remind you that a comprehensive list of banned items is pinned to the door of his office, should a student have any doubts as to the legality of an object in their possession."

Money passed from Sean to Boris.

"Those wishing to try out for their House Quidditch teams should see Madam Hooch or consult their House Quidditch captains." Dumbledore smiled. "Last, though not necessarily least, I would like to announce a change in appointments. First, Professor Severus Snape has succeeded Professor Killory as Head of Slytherin House."

There was a half-hearted smattering of applause.

"And secondly, it is my utmost pleasure to welcome our new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Doris Atremidus."

The merry old woman waved at everyone. It was strange- she looked almost as old as Dumbledore.

"She wrote our textbook!" Lucy hissed, jabbing a finger towards Professor Atremidus. "I read the foreword- she was the most famous Healer of the twentieth century!"

"Was?"

"She retired seven years ago." Lucy said. "There was a big scandal, because she chose to retire just as the war was starting… she lost a lot of support."

"But she's ancient; how could you begrudge her retirement?"

Lucy shrugged, but a bitter look caught like a burr in her eyes.

"Now we're through the rubric, I must stress that the most important thing that you can do tonight- is to eat!"

With a flourish of Dumbledore's hands, food began to appear on the tables, filling the air with the delicious smell of potatoes, gravy, roast chicken, and a rather appetizing dish of buttered carrots that had materialized by Conny's elbow. With a grin, she tucked into her meal; there was nothing quite like the Hogwarts start of term feast. Beside her, Clarence and Olivia managed to forget their nervousness and trepidation long enough to stuff their faces, eyes wide at the sight of all the food.

"Whoa, slow down there." Luke said as Olivia nearly choked on a steak. "The food isn't going to disappear when you blink, you can take it slow."

She swallowed the meat and nodded sheepishly. "It's just… this food is amazing. I've never had anything like it before."

"How come?"

"Well…" she went red and looked embarrassed. "My family… they're not very well off. I had to apply for a bursary to come here."

Now Conny looked, she saw that Olivia's robes were threadbare and worn grey; her uniform was peppered with holes and in need of darning. Her shoes were too large, and her wand was practically a decayed stick. She was slight and doe-eyed, with tangled blonde hair and a worried look about her. No wonder she'd looked shocked by the splendor of the castle and the richness of the food.

Before she knew what she was doing, Conny took her wand out and mumbled: "_Taleus._"

Olivia made a squealing sound as a flash of magic sunk into her chest. The rest of the table looked equally as shocked, some older students even drawing their wands. But instead of the poor first-year's ears falling off, or a cactus sprouting out of her chest, the holes in her uniform began to knit together; frayed ends cut themselves off, and stains disappeared. Conny felt a sudden drain on her energy, and she knew then that she'd used a spell way beyond her capabilities. She lowered her wand and lost grip on it as it clattered down on her plate, and took a deep breath, steadying herself.

"Conny!" Jonmarc cried in alarm. She teetered backwards and poor Clarence had to support her. Blinking, Conny regained her composure- though she felt strangely drowsy- and looked at Olivia.

"Th- thank you!" She squeaked, looking at her uniform, which now was quite tidy.

"Don't mind her." Luke chuckled, putting his wand away. "New first-years, this is Conny DeH. She enjoys being attacked by other students, mauling teachers and generally being rather silly."

Conny hissed at him to hush; everyone thought it was Jonmarc who'd attacked Snape at the last Quidditch match of last year. Luke had performed the spell that had switched their faces. He chuckled and winked, going back to his broccoli.

"Good to meet you all." She muttered, wiping gravy off her wand. Soon afterwards, the main course disappeared and the puddings, in their splendor began for materialize. Conny had wisely left room this year for chocolate sponge and custard, with some profiteroles and a banana to finish.

She' consumed so much food, and used even more magic than her body could take; she kept drifting off to sleep on her way to the Ravenclaw tower (once she almost fell through the trick staircase on the fourth floor), and was lucky that Jonmarc was excellent at riddles, because she could barely stay awake, and was in no fit state to tie her shoelaces, let alone use her brain. She fell asleep fully clothed on top of her bedcovers mere minutes later.

Lucy Ra took the time to write a letter.

_Cell Forty-Seven, Azkaban Prison, North Sea_

_Dear Khai,_

_I'm back at school. Not much has changed, but you know Doris Atremidus, the famous healer? Well, she's our DADA teacher this year. Crazy, hm? Cuz she can cure, like, anything, and she's our teacher! Weird. Anyway, I hope you're good and I'm sorry I didn't write much over the summer. You know how it is, living with Ali. He's basically turfing me out. I think that he and his girlfriend are trying for a baby. It would be cute, but he's all snappy at me. So I'm not staying at his for Xmas._

_Anyway, sorry to harp on. You're innocent, and you'll be released. I know it. Don't worry. And when you come back, I've got a really nice pair of socks for you, since I know you said that your feet get really cold, what with Azkaban being a prison in the north sea and all._

_Can I have an owl?_

_Love,_

_Lucy_


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter Three: Beetles and Bathing

When morning dawned cold and heavy, with the smell of starting school in the air, most of Ravenclaw began to wake. Lucy Ra had already been and returned from the Owlery with her secret letter to her brother Khai; Polly, Anna and Rebecca had been arguing over the mirror for a good half hour. Jonmarc was blindly fumbling for his tie, his curly hair sticking out at odd angles. Luke was snuggling with his girlfriend Ally on a squashy sofa in the common room while she picked the knots out of her hair. The girls' dressing room, a large circular chamber full of vanity tables and mirrors, was packed with excited Ravenclaws chatting and applying make-up or rolling up their skirts to make them as short as possible.

Conny was still asleep.

"Get. Up!" Lucy kicked the side of her bed with gusto, but she just rolled over and snored. "You lazy lump of shite, get up!"

Lucy grabbed a glass of water from her bedside table and chucked the whole thing over Conny's face. She yowled in terror and sprang up, wand in hand, looking about wildly.

"I'LL KILL YOU RALPHUS!" She yelled, blinking, and then realizing where she was. "Oh. G'morning."

"Nice to hear you're up." Polly said scathingly from where she was adjusting her blue Alice band. "Breakfast started half an hour ago."

Conny looked at the ticking clock beside her bed and saw that it was indeed eight o'clock. "Circe!" She swore, jumping out of bed, accidentally slipping on Lucy's spare parchment. "Why didn't anyone wake me?"

"Lucy's been trying since dawn," Anna said, "I think she was only a few minutes away from jumping on you."

"Phew." Conny rummaged in her wardrobe- her trunk had been unpacked for her- to find her uniform. She hastily put on her stiff white shirt, pleated grey skirt and matching (itchy) grey jumper, grey knee socks (as if the uniform could get any uncooler?), and was slipping on her black school shoes when the clock hit eight-fifteen. She grabbed her school robes, tie and school bag, which was bursting at the seams with all her school books and supplies because she didn't know what lessons she'd have today, and legged it down to the Great Hall while dressing. She sat down on the Ravenclaw table and helped herself to toast, a boiled egg and some bacon, washed down with some pumpkin juice. At the head of their table, Professor Flitwick was levitating the small blue card tubes that held the Ravenclaws' timetables along to their recipients. Conny managed to catch hers this year, and the little white wax seal jolted into life- it was an exact replica of a face.

"What can go up a chimney down, but not down a chimney up?" It asked. Conny giggled.

"That's a muggle riddle." She said. The face shrugged, if a wax face was capable of such a feat, and asked the riddle again. "It's an umbrella."

"Correct."

"What's an umbrella?" Lucy asked from where she was checking her timetable.

"It's one of those things with stretched waterproof cloth on a stick that muggles carry so they don't get wet." Conny explained.

"Ah. They often have them when they're walking."

"Yep." Conny pulled her timetable out. It read _DeHayersae, Conyeri, Ravenclaw, Timetable for 1983-4_, and she scanned it, groaning as she saw that she still had astronomy with Hufflepuff on a Sunday and Monday evening. It wasn't so much the fact that Astronomy was on Sunday and Monday- rather that Astronomy was there at all. Conny hated astronomy with a vengeance.

"Ugh, look, we've got double History of Magic this year." Lucy pointed to their Friday schedule, which was today.

"Excellent; a double is always better for a nap." Conny said jovially. "Oh, Double Defense too- with the old lady."

"Famous healer." Lucy corrected. "First we have Transfig- thank heavens that isn't a double, I might top myself."

"Transfiguration is fun." Conny said lightly- it was, after all, her best subject, next to charms. She was shocking at Astronomy, competent at Herbology and History of Magic, and decent at Defense- she couldn't really be sure how good she was, since as a means of thanks for saving the world her last teacher had given her a hundred percent in her end-of-term exams and a special award for services to the school. She thought she might go and look at the little plaque in the trophy room at some point. Surprisingly, her Potions grade was also acceptable even to Professor Git-Face Snape, who had given her seventy-eight percent and had even been kind enough not to take points off Ravenclaw for breathing.

"You're crazy." Rebecca Dannat said through a croissant. "Transfig is torture. McGonagall will set us an essay first lesson- bet you five sickles."

"I'm not betting against that." Conny held up her hands, knowing full well that Professor McGonagall was no fairy when it came to homework assignments, and now they were in second year and had covered a good chunk of basic theory, the lessons would be as hard as the prep.

They collected their books and strode to Transfiguration on the first floor, cleaning their teeth with the Dentursus charm on the way there. Most if not all students who had the competency to cast it in order to brush one's pearly whites, to negate the need to rush back to the tower after breakfast, used the simple spell. Now second-years, the group of Ravenclaws had little trouble with it. They entered the airy Transfiguration classroom to find Professor McGonagall sitting on her desk in the form of a tabby cat. Surprisingly, Conny saw her own cat, Bach, sitting beside her, looking as guilty as a cat could.

"Uh oh." She said, taking her seat and taking out her parchment and quill. As usual Jonmarc was the last to bustle in and take his seat, his shoelaces untied and milk on his upper lip.

McGonagall twitched and transformed back into her human form, looking both amused and irritated at the same time. She picked up Bach, who looked very surprised, and stroked him gently. "May I enquire as to the owner of this lovely cat?"

Blushing, Conny raised her hand sheepishly. The whole class turned to look at her; McGonagall strode over and offered Bach to her. "I would ask that you teach your cat some manners. I am not accustomed to being… mounted by randy cats when I am taking a stroll around the castle at night in my animagus form."

Conny took Bach into her arms and realised, five seconds later, what McGonagall was saying. She went as red as it was possible to go and mumbled an apology to the table. Unperturbed, McGonagall continued with the lesson as though Conny's cat hadn't been trying to… well, however you put it, Bach had been a naughty boy.

"Today, I will test how well you've been reading over the summer." She said, much to the groaning and general displeasure of the class. McGonagall pulled out a cage of beetles. "You will transfigure these into buttons. The spell is in your textbooks, and you should know the theory by now."

That was as much of an introduction as she'd give. Distracted by her mortification, Conny kept turning her beetle purple instead of into a button.

"Miss DeHayersae, if you could concentrate for one second, perhaps you'd be more successful."

Conny nodded and went back to work. Beside her, Lucy was red with silent laughter, as was much of the class. Oh dear. Sighing, she pointed her wand at the scurrying beetle and said: "_Coleoptera Abeo!_"

Her beetle sort of froze, wobbled, and flattened, but it still looked like a beetle. "_Coleoptera Abeo_, for Circe's sake!"

This did it. She jabbed into the beetle so hard that it made a funny noise, and then, with a soft 'prip' sound, it fully flattened, became shiny and concave and grew four small holes in the centre. Conny picked it up and grinned, showing it to Lucy, whose button was still scurrying around her desk.

"How'd you manage that?"

"I'm just amazing." Conny grinned, flipping her button in the air, leaning back on her chair. McGonagall, who was shouting at Feol and seemed to have some inexplicable sixth sense pertaining to when somebody in her class wasn't working, whipped around inhumanly fast. Her eyes met Conny, flickered to the button in her hand, and then back up to glare at her again.

"I would advise that if you are finished with the task, you try untransfiguring your button." She said with a small, evil smile. "And if you can do that, then I will confess myself impressed."

Conny grinned back at her; it was obviously a challenge. She still had half an hour of the lesson to go, so she rolled up her sleeves and opened her textbook. She flicked through, but couldn't find anything about untransfiguration. Perplexed, she sat back in her chair looking at the button.

With a flash of inspiration, she stood up and went to the cupboard full of old books at the back of the class. Inside, she found piles of stained and dog-eared transfiguration textbooks. She rummaged around for a while before finding a disintegrating copy of Intermediate Transfiguration, the O.W.L level textbook. It was heavy and imposing, but she dutifully carried it back to her desk and opened it up with a cloud of tepid dust. Checking the index, she found 'UnTransfiguration' was the subject of chapter four, and so turned to it. On the way she noticed just how complicated the runes, magical circles and diagrams were... and then there was pages and pages of solid text explaining obscure magical laws, table upon table of tiny numbers pertaining to the magical properties of various objects and spells. She gulped as she stopped on the introductory page of chapter four.

_The art of Transfiguration is one that is not finite; therefore the reversal of such a spell is more difficult to quantify, especially in the case of an inexperienced wizard, by whom the original spell may have been poorly or incompletely cast to begin with._

_Untransfiguration, at a basic level, requires the caster of the spell to know the original state of the object. By reversing the flow of magical energy- draining it from the object rather than supplying it, one can return it to its original state. The incantation's base word is 'Reverto', though, as in other spells, a focal word to direct that a pathway of the magic is recommended. Utmost concentration and will is needed._

_Many wizards find it helpful to envision their previously cast transfiguration as a complex knot, and to imagine themselves unpicking it when they are reversing the spell._

It sounded simple enough. Conny looked down at her button, black and shiny, and picked up her wand. "_Coleoptera Reverto!_"

With a brief puff of bright light, the button pinged across the classroom and hit the blackboard before clattering onto the floor. Cursing, Conny retrieved it, looking at it as though it was at fault rather than her. McGonagall gave her a superior look from where she was helping Rebecca Dannat, which only made her blood boil hotter.

Sitting back down, she mulled the passage from the textbook over, realizing something. It was instructing her to pull her own magic out of the button rather than put more in. So, she started with her wand touching it, said the spell and then pulled her wand back towards her, away from the button. A thin stream of white drained from the button, and with delight, she saw antennae begin to grow. Concentrating harder, she pulled harder as she encountered some resistance, and slowly legs sprouted from the side of her button. She felt the eyes of the class on her and, with one final pull, took all of her magic out of the button, turning it back into a beetle.

She picked the startled beetle up and looked at McGonagall, who actually looked impressed, though admittedly grudgingly. She stormed over and picked up the beetle between her forefinger and thumb, as though looking for imperfections. Setting the beetle back in the box they'd originally come from, McGonagall pursed her lips and said: "Five points to Ravenclaw, I suppose."

Lucy gave her a high-five and the rest of her House whooped with delight. McGonagall turned to them and refuted their enthusiasm sharply. "If Miss DeHayersae can do it already, you all should have too! Get back to work!"

They muttered darkly and returned to their beetles.

By the time morning break came along, Conny was in a very good mood. In fact, such a good mood that she didn't even complain when McGonagall set them a whole heap of homework. In fact, another upside of her excellent performance was that Ralphus Crymge, who had become, if it was possible, even more of a smarmy git over the summer, hadn't started giving her or Lucy a hard time yet. She pranced through the corridors, collecting her Defense Against the Dark Arts books before lining up outside Professor Atremidus' classroom. Along the line, she saw the pale Slytherin beauty, the cold-hearted and clinically detached Clarissa Mothley. Over the summer she'd not tanned a shade, and grown several inches so that she now towered over poor Jonmarc, who was about as far away from a growth spurt as it was possible to be. She was perusing one of her favourite books, _Nature's Nobility: A Wizard Genealogy_, ignoring the rest of the world, her eyes heavily lidded. The Mothley family was descended from a European aristocrat, and part of the House of Karov, one of the ancient wizarding bloodlines.

"Rissa, can I see that a minute?" She asked, and the girl quietly handed it to her. Conny looked at the page it was open at and saw that it was a family tree. The family tree, specifically, of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.

She saw some names that she recognized; Methalius Rosier, Slytherin Quidditch team vice-captain, far to the right, Darcy Flint, who was actually a Slytherin in her year who was talking to Lena Blishwick a little down the corridor, and more than a few of the Death Eaters that had been sent to Azkaban two years earlier. She traced the Black family line down from the top and found her finger stopping at one name: Narcissa, who married a man named Malfoy. For some reason, the name Malfoy was strangely familiar. By his name was a page reference; she flipped through the book to his own section, where she paused, alarmed.

Emblazoned on the page was the Malfoy family crest. It was deep green in colour, with a chevron, a couple of stars and a motto that Conny's Latin wasn't quite good enough to translate, but on either side of the body of the crest was the very same rearing dragon-like creature that was sewn with silver thread onto the scrap of cloth that she'd ripped from the painting thief.

Malfoy. _Maufoi_, the muggle who'd come forward had called himself. There was, however, no man named Méprise in the Malfoy family.

"Jon." She called him over, pulling the newspaper cutting out of one of the multiple pockets that lined the inside of her robes. "Jon, this name is in French, right?"

He looked at it. "Oui. Méprise is a strange name… eet is meaning, ah… I do not know that translation."

"We'll check." She said, feeling the footfalls of Professor Atremidus behind the door of the classroom. "Later."

"Okay." He said, looking at her funnily. The door to the classroom swung open and revealed the tiny, frail professor Atremidus. She surveyed them all through her thick spectacles and in the act of adjusting her cardigan quite assured the whole class that she was very much an old, old lady. With bulging grey eyes and wispy white hair, she shuffled out to survey them all. Dressed in loose robes covered in pastel paisleys, under which swayed a green cardigan and an ankle-length woolen skirt, her look was completed by stockings and comfortable shoes.

"Very well… into the room with you lot, then… stand out here much longer and you'll all catch colds…" she said in a wobbly voice, ushering them into her classroom. Conny didn't want to point out that as it was only the second of September, it was still sweltering and many top buttons had been undone. Luckily, Atremidus didn't seem to notice, myopic as she was, and shuffled to the blackboard sighing about the 'chilly castle'.

"Good morning, class." She said, tapping her curved wand on the board so that her name came up in scrawly handwriting. She frowned at it and tapped again until the writing reformed into a nice cursive. "Healer's handwriting; hard habit to break, that."

There were a few muttered giggles. Atremidus continued, shuffling to a large copper kettle over a small fire that was boiling. "Well, first… we should have some tea."

Conny blinked. This woman was seriously going to make tea for the whole class? At eleven o'clock?

Apparently so. No sooner had she shared a look and a soft giggle with Lucy than a mug of milky, sugary tea landed in front of her, roughly spilling some on her textbook. She took a sip and found it curiously lukewarm. Atremidus was bustling around.

"Where is that blasted tin… where on earth did I put it?" She muttered to herself. The students started passing notes while she was fiddling about, sensing that this class would be one in which they wouldn't have to do very much. Conny, who was sitting next to Lucy, started a game of hangman with her.

"Ah ha!" Came the triumphant cry from behind a tottering tower of textbooks. Atremidus came back into view with a large tin decorated with tiny pink elephants. "Biscuits… can't have tea without biscuits. Here, pet, why don't you have one?"

She opened the tin and offered a biscuit to Rissa, who looked miffed at being called 'pet', and even more annoyed at being offered a biscuit like she was five years old. She politely declined, but there was no stopping Atremidus.

"Come on dear, one biscuit can't hurt. Growing girl like you, you need all the food you can get! Stick-thin, you all are… wasn't like that back in my day… come on, have a bite…"

After about five minutes, Rissa eventually thrust her hand into the tin and pulled out a custard cream, thanking the elderly woman tersely before miming eating it to please her. Seemingly satisfied, Atremidus moved along the rows, and soon Conny and Lucy were staring at their undrunk tea and uneaten hobnobs, wondering if there was actually any useful content to this lesson. Not that they particularly needed to practice practical defensive magic, as they had come second and first place respectively in the first-year bracket of the Dueling Tournament last year.

"I suppose we'll have to read the textbook." Lucy muttered as Atremidus finally finished handing out biscuits and started the long hobble back to the front of the classroom. They pulled out their copies of _The Illness of Iniquity: Diseases of the Dark_ from their schoolbags and looked down at them expectantly. Once Atremidus had reached the front of the class, she sat down on her big, puffy chair and surveyed them all, smiling. "Well, now that everyone's had something to drink and biscuit, why don't we get to know each other a bit more?"

The class groaned. Atremidus seemed not to notice and continued. "We'll go around the room, saying our names and one fact about ourselves. I'll start. My name is Doris, and I used to be a Healer. Now you, young lady?"

She pointed to Rissa, who was staring at her biscuit in disgust. Quietly, she said: "I am Clarissa, and I detest custard creams."

Lucy snorted with laughter, as did many other students. Atremidus pursed her lips but gestured for the next student.

"I am Derek, and I play the clarinet." Derek Mothley said without any flair whatsoever. Whereas Rissa managed to appear coolly detached in a mysteriously superior kind of way, Derek just seemed… dull.

"I'm Daisy, and I speak mermish." Daisy Sorbes, a Hufflepuff, said perkily.

"Really?" Atremidus asked.

"Yes- I live near Lake Windermere, and we're forever chatting to the merpeople there." She grinned as though it was something amazing to speak mermish.

"Very interesting indeed, my dear… now you, sir."

They went around the class like this, an endless cycle of 'My name is so and so and I have done/can do/live like/would like to do/own/play this or that'. By the time Atremidus came to Lucy, the class had finished their tea and biscuits and no longer really cared about anything but the grandfather clock behind the front desk.

Lucy grinned. "I'm Lucy, and I'd like to know why you retired before the war."

Atremidus froze, and the rest of the class perked up, looking between the two. Lucy was sitting back in her chair, arms crossed; smirk haphazardly plastered over her face. The elderly lady examined her as the silence in the room grew to a crescendo. Her face seemed to sag but then harden, her eyes, deep in their sockets, were tired and yet strangely fiery. Atremidus interlocked her long, arthritic fingers and sighed, looking at Lucy with the elderly gaze of judgement.

"Lucy," she tested the name out in her mouth and then look a long glance down at the register in front of her. "Lucelia, rather. What a lovely name; Portuguese, is it?"

"Yes." Lucy said evenly, watching and waiting. The class were now paying full attention, looking uneasily around.

"I suppose you think yourself confident, Lucelia. Clever; no doubt you are popular. Manipulative, perhaps? Very set in your ways, though I wouldn't presume." Atremidus tapped at the blackboard with her wand; tiny, spidery writing began to fill the whole space up; names- hundreds and thousands of names, so many that they spilled out and onto the floor. "These are the names of every single confirmed death executed at the behest of or on behalf of He Who Must Not be Named. A man who, Lucelia, was not unlike yourself."

The colour drained from Lucy's face, her knuckles a strained white against the dark wood of her desk. All her churlish bluster had abandoned her, leaving a thin, fragile girl confronted by a truth. Atremidus' face was still as stone, not a single emotion flickering across it. "But then again, Lucelia, there have been many witches an wizards like yourself that have made the world a better place. Albus Dumbledore stands out as perhaps the most memorable. The question is, will you let yourself be ultimately ruled by your darker nature? Will it consume you? Will any of you-" she gestured to the whole class, "-will any of you allow this? Am I teaching the next generation of Death Eaters?"

There was a mutter of horrified 'no's around the classroom. They may have been young, but even eight, nine or ten year-olds (as they had been at the zenith of the war) knew how the horrors of the war had affected their parents' lives. Destruction, curfews, deaths, suspicion, anarchy- that had all pervaded their childhood.

Atremidus nodded with a pleased smile. "Good. Because, and I hope you will think no worse of me for it- especially you, Lucelia, so quick to judge- I devoted my life to healing the sick. For over fifty years I have been a Healer, and they were a wonderful fifty years. It was only perhaps eight years ago when things changed. Wizards and witches were turning up at St. Mungo's dead or worse; there was dark magic afoot, and it frightened me. As the seventies progressed, things became worse and worse, and He Who Must Not Be Named emerged into the full horror of his existence. I retired because I am old, because I couldn't stand the sight of needless death at the hands of one man. I retired because I was no longer a Healer of the modern age- they called me brilliant, but that was before the war. I was not a war medic, and never have been. I hope you would not think me a coward for what I did. Lucelia?"

The question was soft, and Conny wasn't sure if Atremidus was just making sure her point hit home, or if she really sought Lucy's support, that she needed to hear acceptance of her choice.

Lucy paused and looked, surprisingly, over at Conny. What support did she think would be offered her? "I… I don't at all, Professor."

"Thank you." Atremidus said with a small smile, and then the names vanished. She took a sip of tea, collected herself, and then returned to her old lady voice; except that it wasn't possible for her words to sound threatening when they were said through a chocolate hobnob.

"This year, we are going to learn about the diseases of the Dark. Their potions, their plagues; the spells that make a man's skin rot and his teeth fall out, the poisons that are employed to slowly drive a man insane. It was once my job to recognise these things and to remedy them, now, I am passing this knowledge on to you."

She smiled sweetly, and perched a pair of silvery reading glasses on her nose, looking down at her notes. "If you would turn to page seven, we will begin with the basics: categorising various dark maladies. As you can see, we have plagues, which usually cover an area- later on we will examine dark wizard involvement in the Black Death of 1348. There will be shared classes later on in the year as we examine poisons- Professor Snape, the sweetheart that he is, has, I am told, some excellent material on their manufacture and application. Then, there are specific illness-causing spells, or enchanted objects that cause sickness… we will be examining… at the height of the war… St. Mungo's…"

Conny took notes, putting special emphasis on underlining the word 'sweetheart' next to Snape, the scratching of her quill a comfortable sound nowadays. She was using Lucy's lovely peacock-feather quill, which she'd got for Christmas last year from one of her brothers, because Lucy hardly ever took notes unless they had to write an essay or do some questions. Lucy was sitting quietly in her seat thinking deeply about something, which never boded well; Lucy didn't often let it show when she was thinking, preferring people to believe that all her brilliant ideas were haphazard strokes of genius.

Conny elbowed her when Atremidus started explaining their homework. "Oi, she's setting prep."

"Write it down for me?"

Conny frowned. "I'm not your dogsbody, Lucy."

Lucy leaned over to where Polly and Anna were sitting behind her. "Write down the homework for me would you?"

"Sure, Luce." Polly said with awe in her eyes, as though it was some kind of honour to be asked to do something for Lucy. Conny felt sick when Lucy acted like this… like a puppeteer. A roiling feeling of nausea and discontent settled in her stomach and at the end of the lesson she left before Lucy, meeting up instead with Corfax, the fat Hufflepuff boy. Conny secretly really enjoyed Corfax's company. He was muggleborn and had been trying too hard to integrate into wizard society at the beginning of last year, but as the year progressed he'd matured and was now excellent conversation. They'd gone to the British Wizarding Literature Festival together and they shared a lot of interests, especially current affairs. When there was a Daily Prophet Cryptic Crossword question that neither she not Jonmarc could do, she'd go straight to Corfax. Often they sat in the Ravenclaw Commons drinking hot chocolate and reading newspapers, or playing Gobstones with Corfax's incredible collection. He was a friend that would never leave you; when Conny had been unable to sleep due to the terrifying dreams that Avery was beaming into her mind, Corfax had sought her out and calmed her with rescue remedy and good companionship. The two of them travelled down to lunch where she sat on the Hufflepuff table with him; this was not unusual in the burst of amity that had blossomed between everyone after the end of the war.

"Why so glum?" He asked through the beef bourguignon, his face open and worried. "It's only the first day of school and something's already worrying you."

"Something's always worrying me." Conny said, poking potatoes around her plate. "It's just… It's not important."

"It clearly is if you're moping about it."

"I'm not moping!"

"Next to the work 'mope' in the dictionary is a picture of you at this very moment." He said knowledgeably. "You can tell Uncle Fax."

"I'm sure I can." She sighed. "Lucy's strange."

"So she's what's troubling you."

"She's the root of all evil, too." Conny said sadly. "I do love her to bits and all, Fax, but I hate it when she acts… when she acts like her brothers."

"She's been brought up by them," he said, thinking, "So naturally they're her role models."

"But they're… they're criminals!"

"May that be, but they're still her family. She still loves them, even if she realises that what they're doing isn't right."

"You're weirdly… old." She said suspiciously.

"You grow up quickly in the muggle world." He said. "I've been bullied all my life, so I had to."

"Muggle schools were hell." She observed, helping herself to bread and butter pudding. "So I can't stop her acting… acting like she does?"

They both looked over at Lucy, who was sniggering loudly at the Ravenclaw table. Corfax nodded. "No. You just have to hope that she sees that the way she's acting is hurting you, and she stops."

"Thank you." She said quietly. "I need to go check something; I'll see you later in History of Magic?"

"Sure."

As Conny left the Great Hall, she was surprised by Bach ambushing her from behind a gargoyle and landing lithely on her shoulder, sticking his claws into her robes to find purchase. Conny looked at her patchy cat with a withering gaze, though in that way that cats do, Bach stared back smugly.

"You've been very naughty." She flicked his nose. "Honestly, my own cat can't even… if you get Professor McGonagall pregnant, I'll never forgive you."

Bach mewled demurely and pretended not to pay attention, instead enjoying the free trip up to the Ravenclaw tower on her shoulder. Conny unloaded her massive selection of school books onto her bed and, much to his protests, yanked Bach off her robes to put him on her pillow, which was his favourite spot.

"Dictionary, dictionary…" she muttered, sorting through books and magazines. Finding the foot-thick Anglo-French dictionary, she hefted it open and flicked through- H, I, J, K, L… M. It took her about ten minutes to find the word she was looking for.

"Méprise." She read. "Scorned. What on earth does scorned mean?"

This necessitated another different book, this time to the English Dictionary, to find out what scorned meant.

"Scorn, noun. The feeling or belief that someone or something is worthless or despicable; contempt. Brilliant. So a muggle called Scorned Malfoy stole and returned a painting. Big deal, Conny."

She sat on her bed thinking. What did it matter to her anyway? She'd already got in quite enough trouble for rummaging about in other people's business last year, and this newest conspiracy did smack of danger, considering that it involved the Malfoy family, who, if Conny remembered, only narrowly escaped Azkaban.

"Ah, whatever." She thumped the dictionary back in its place holding up a half-full bottle of spring water. She gathered her History of Magic books up and went down to the Common Room to sulk. Luckily, Ralphus was there to help her.

"Have a good summer with the frogs, DeH?" He asked, sauntering over to her chair. He had grown a bit, and now looked painfully drawn.

"It was brilliant, thanks- how was yours? I suppose having workaholic absent parents must be wonderful in the holidays."

He sneered, moving closer. There wasn't exactly… well, the two of them didn't hate each other, but Ralphus hated Lucy and Conny was Lucy's best friend, so it sort of came with the job. Their insults were sort of lazy. "Nice to know you've been thinking about me."

"All the time." She rolled her eyes.

"Where's Ra?"

"Having lunch, like normal people."

"Not eating with her?" He asked, smiling as the look of pain crossed her face. "Aww, you've had an argument. How sweet."

"Shut up." She growled back at him, and he knew he'd hit a nerve.

"Aw." He grinned. "She finally ditched you for cooler friends?"

"I said, shut up!"

"Tetchy, tetchy." He said. "I mean, if you don't have Lucy, who are you, really? Just some girl that gets attacked by students a lot. Probably trying to do Lucy a favour and get rid of you-"

Conny punched him in the face. Hard. She heard his nose break.

"Have a good afternoon." She said curtly and left the Common Room, feeling very good but also, paradoxically, rotten.

The bad mood settled in her from then until the next Thursday, and even getting twenty house points for Ravenclaw in a single week by impressing McGonagall didn't cheer her up. Binns was droning through Gil Lockhart's favourite topic, the Arthurian Era, Flitwick was trying in vain to help the Hufflepuffs understand Scourgify, everything was… normal. Still, by the time that the Quidditch trials came along, Conny and Lucy were hardly speaking.

"Right." Luke said, puffing his chest out, looking rather fetching in his quidditch uniform. "We had some good players graduate last year, and I'm looking for some talented young Ravenclaws to replace them."

He looked at the small crowd. "We need a new chaser, a new beater, and a new seeker."

Conny looked glumly around; she wasn't any of those things. Her over-sized quidditch uniform, loaned to her to try out with, was itchy and heavy. She looked up at the stands; some students had come to watch, mostly Ravenclaws, but she spotted Az Spooks lounging by himself, looking at her, and blushed. She was going to embarrass herself in front of him.

"So, uh…" Luke looked around. "Everyone trying out can do a few laps around the stadium, just to warm up, then we'll do some passing and shooting drills. Any seekers, you'll go off with me, beaters to Boris," he gestured to the thick-set lad beside him, "And chasers to Kelley."

Conny mounted her broom with a sigh of resignation. Why was she even here?

"Okay, go!" Luke gave a blast on his whistle and the group of Ravenclaws shot into the air. Conny allowed herself a decent speed, but nothing too fast. She cornered conservatively, focusing on control rather than speed, because she got scared if she had to fly too fast. Lucy lapped her with a peal of raucous laughter, hopping up to her knees on her broom and looking back at the trailing masses. Conny peeked at Luke, who was hovering in the centre of the pitch, his eyes shifting from player to player. His eyebrows quirked into a neat arch when he noticed Lucy's swaggering flight.

The whistle cut through the air again and the Ravenclaws came to a dapper stop around him. Conny wobbled slightly on the touchdown but managed to mask it with a sort of half-stretch.

"Right!" Luke started lobbing quaffles about. Conny caught one and cradled it to her chest with a squeak; Az Spooks let out a quiet whoop up in the stands and gave her a thumbs-up. "Pair up and pass!"

Conny whipped her head around looking for someone to pair up with (namely anyone but Lucy), but the wiry Arabic girl beat her to it. She zoomed towards Conny and stopped within an inch of her face, a big smile gleaming in the sunset.

"Heya Conny." She said, fluttering her lashes. "Shall we do some passing?"

Gritting her teeth, Conny tried to smile back. "Sure."

She threw the quaffle to Lucy, who caught it in one smooth motion. Lucy tossed it back a little too fast, like… like she wanted Conny to fail. Doing as Az had taught her, Conny snatched it into her body and tried her best to keep steady. Across from her, in the dusk, Lucy's eyes were flashing dangerously, goading her, saying what the unspoken social rules of childhood would not let her vocalize. _Don't go making an enemy of me. I will win, every time._

Conny lobbed the quaffle deliberately wide- Lucy gave her a nasty smile and lunged with easy grace to catch it, swinging impressively back into position. Conny bitterly caught the return ball, and the volley between them began to escalade, shots becoming wider, faster, falling short or being lobbed high, and the catches growing more and more difficult, brooms straining with the jerks and the rough tugging of their occupants. Lucy threw a vicious shot far to Conny's right; she lunged out and felt the leather brush her fingertips but fell short. She overbalanced and with a cry slipped off the side of her broom; flinging a wild hand up, she managed to grasp a handful of twigs, which snapped and broke in her hand. Conny panicked and thrashed about, her stomach rose into her chest and she fell through the air, yelling and cursing and scrunching her eyes shut expecting the hard quidditch pitch to meet her.

Something yanked at her wrist and she swore as her shoulder was wrenched out of joint. Hanging limply in midair, she opened her eyes and looked down to see thirty feet of air between herself and the ground. Above, a strong wrist, covered by a grey Hogwarts jumper with the green stripe of Slytherin house, was Az Spooks, grinning, teeth clenched, Nimbus 1700 staying level in the air like that damn good broom it was.

"Shame about the quaffle." He said, and then laughing, raised his leg on the other side of the broom to reveal the quaffle balancing on his shoe. "You're lucky I brought my broom, Miss DeH."

"You're lucky I'm a damsel in distress." Conny grinned as he set her down on the grass. Luke came over with concern on his face.

"Are you okay, Conny?" He asked. "I saw you go over; Lucy wasn't right to give you that throw- she forgets that we're not all as good as her."

"I'm fine." She said, feeling both relieved and let down. "But I don't think I'm good enough for the team. Falling of your broom isn't really a good match strategy, and you don't need a keeper anyway…"

"No! Come on, Conny, you should stay- you're not that bad, anyway- better than some of the tools here." His eyes briefly flickered towards third-year Ravenclaw Gavin Metlock, who was having trouble keeping his broom steady only about a metre up in the air.

"Yes, maybe, but you don't need a keeper." She shrugged and squeaked as Az let go of her arm. "And- ow! Circe, I think I need to visit Madam Pomfrey anyway."

"Okay." Luke said sadly. "Maybe next year. In the meantime, Conny- you're welcome at practice any time. As long as you don't fall off too often, yes?"

"Thanks." Conny said, wincing.

"I'll make sure she gets to see Pomfrey." Az assured Luke. They gave each other that boy handshake- the one that says 'we're not friends, in fact, we're rivals, but I respect you and I'm not losing face by acting like a child. Man power!' Az helped Conny return her school broom to the storage shed before they ambled slowly back to the castle chatting.

"How's your week been?"

"Brilliant!" He grinned. "Fourth year is great- you've really gotten into your classes, but you don't have the pressure of O.W.L.s yet. More time for quidditch."

"Boys and their brooms." Conny rolled her eyes as they traversed the steps and slipped through the huge double doors into the Entrance Hall. "I didn't really want to be on the team anyway. Not with Lucy."

"What is it between you two? The quaffle-passing looked bloody lethal."

Conny sighed. "We… disagree. On some things. It's annoying, because I love Lucy to bits and she's my best friend, but I just can't take it when she acts so…"

"So like Lucy." He finished pensively. "You should really make up. Why can't you suddenly stand her, when you were practically joined at the hip last year?"

"I don't know." Conny admitted. "Maybe I got used to it over last year, and then during summer in France I conveniently forgot what she's like. That's why she shocks me now."

"Bingo." Az said. "Damn, you'd have to be in Ravenclaw to think all that out at twelve."

"Oi!" She jabbed at his arm. "I may be twelve- nearly thirteen- but that doesn't automatically make me dumb!"

"All kids are dumb." He grinned, tousling her hair.

"I'm not." She huffed, crossing her arms. "Hey, ask me a question, I'll answer it."

"A fourth-year question?"

"Yep."

"Okay." He grinned, making a thinking face. "How would I brew a… Cauterizing Concoction?"

"Not potions!"

"You said any question."

"Any question but potions."

"Right- name all the stars in the constellation of E-"

"Not astronomy!" Conny hissed, pretending to wail. "Eesh, you're being a bully, Az!"

"Okay, okay- I'll play to your strengths. Rodett's Strategium contains which four tenets?"

"Pre-emptive planning, Negotiation measures, Four points of Standard Engagement and… uh, is it… Effective Conclusion?"

"Efficient Conclusion, you were close. Why have you read all that about Rodett?"

"Killory set us an essay on Rodett and Greenleigh last Easter, and she sent me the Strategium to help me. It was brilliant."

"Bookworm." He teased. "Hmm… here's a real one. How would I switch an inorganic quantity with an organic quantity?"

"Sharpe's Law."

"Which is?"

"Oh, gosh, I can't… switching spells are so above me. Isn't it something to do with… well the equation is- grab me a napkin and a pencil?"

Az burst out laughing as they sat down together on the Slytherin table. By now supper was over, and students had gathered to do homework. Still in quidditch kit, Conny scratched at her uncomfortable turtle-necked jumper and shucked off the leather chestguard and shoulderpads. "How do you wear this stuff? I feel two stone heavier."

"You look like you barely weight two stone in the first place." He snorted, pinching her upper arm. "If you're going to play quidditch, you're going to need some weight on you, else you'll blow away."

"I'm not light." Conny protested. "I'm a lot heavier than Lucy- you can see her ribs and everything."

"That's not right. And you're still not heavy enough for quidditch."

"I don't want to bulk up- I'm a girl!"

"At least eat more." Almost at his words a plate of buttered crumpets appeared from the kitchens for her, steaming and looking absolutely scrumptious in the candlelight. "Quick, have one before I gobble them all up!"

"I don't mind fattening up if it's on these." She said into a mouthful of thick butter and scrummy crumpet. "Oh, I'd just love a hot choc-"

Two massive mugs of creamy hot chocolate, topped with whipped cream (proper whipped cream, not from a squirty can), cocoa powder, caramel sauce and mini-marshmallows shaped like golden snitches appeared on the table next to her. Conny made a little noise of delight.

"Oh, I could just forget all about my Charms homework and go snuggle up by a fire with all this and a _good book_." She said with a happy sigh.

"Ugh, trust a Ravenclaw to want to snuggle with a good book." Az said, sticking his tongue out. "I'd like to snuggle with a cute girl."

"No girl could stand your smell."

"Oi. Coming from the girl who smells of sweat and mud."

"I'll shower after I've eaten these crumpets." She said sourly, and the two exchanged a playful grin. Conny finished her crumpets and hot chocolate at a leisurely pace, chatting with Az about everything and anything, until the clock tower chimed eight o'clock and she decided to go back to the Ravenclaw tower to get clean and do homework. In the Common Room, she met Jonmarc and they chatted.

"Ugh, Conny, you smell." He noted.

"Rats." She sighed. "I need to shower. Or… or, hey, Jon, do you want to take an awesome bath?"

"Avec toi?" He asked. "A bath with you?"

"Not a weird bath, Jon. You can wear trunks."

"Oh- okay, I suppose." Jon said. "I'll go and get my things."

"Bon!" Conny giggled, quickly grabbing her pyjamas, a towel, her cloak and a pair of slippers. She met Jon and they went down to the abandoned teachers' bathroom on the second floor, behind the map of Argyllshire, to which the password was 'It's in the wrist'. Conny and Jon slipped inside and closed the passage safely behind them. Jon was gawping at the size of the chamber; it's four pools, each larger and hotter than the next; a wall covered in heated towels in every colour on brass racks, from the floor to the dark, cobwebbed ceiling. Each circular bath was lines with taps that contained every possible product, from fizzing bath bombs and shampoo to small live fish that gushed out and nibbled at your dead skin as you bathed (Conny remembered fondly unleashing these on an unsuspecting Lucy last time they'd visited).

"Encroyable!" Jon breathed, feeling the thickness and softness of the towels between his finger and thumb. "But zis is the teachers' bathroom."

"The disused teachers' bathroom." Conny corrected him, slipping into a swimming costume.

Conny laughed as she lowered herself into the first pool. "C'mon, Jonny, get changed!"

"But…"

"Jon, c'mon. It's not like we're doing anything wrong."

"But…"

"Shush." Conny dismissed him, floating into the second, bubbly pool. "When the weather's fine, we go fishing or go swimming in the seaaaaa…"

Conny sang as she floated through the pools. "Ah, Jon, this is the way to bathe."

"Alouette, gentille alouette; alouette je te plumerai…" Jon sang in return, and they did the whole song (Et la tete, et le bec, et la cou, and so on). Soon they were floating quite comfortably below a safe layer of blue bubbles in the third pool. Jon had allowed Conny to pour copious amounts of herbal shampoo into his mop of curly hair and he now had a white foam afro sticking up comically from the sea of blue. They had a splash fight, then moved to the big pool to wash off shampoo and conditioner before allowing the towels to flap about around them and snuggle closer, drying them off.

"Conny, the boys' showers are never going to be the same for me now." Jon complained as they changed into their pyjamas, and then fastened their cloaks over their shoulders. It was almost nine now, and Conny still hadn't done much homework, so she and Jon scuttled back up to the Ravenclaw tower, started their charms homework and promptly fell asleep in front of the warm, cozy fire.


	5. Chapter 4

Chapter Four: She's Good, but We're Not Okay

"Miss DeHayersae, would you kindly stop showing off and report to me after class?" McGonagall said snappily, one day in mid-October, when Conny was lounging around transfiguring and untransfiguring her candle into a caterpillar and back again. She winced and gave McGonagall an even look before closing her borrowed copy of Intermediate Transfiguration and leaning back on her chair. Beside her, Lucy was trying to untransfigure a button from her school shirt that she'd been practicing with, but not having any luck.

"I do enjoy you looking down at me like I'm a Hufflepuff trying to do a crossword." Lucy said lightly, prodding her button again. "Though I suppose you're talented enough to lord over us mortals, hm?"

"In fact, you're right." Conny replied, transfiguring her candle into a stick of rock and munching on it, feeling very superior. Transfiguration class was like a black coffee to her ego at the moment, and she thoroughly enjoyed excelling at something. What with her disastrous tryout for the quidditch team, her Astronomy grades that seemed to slip faster than a nit trying to scramble for purchase on Professor Snape's greasy hair, it was nice to have a class you didn't have to make much effort it. Especially when it was perceived as one of the hardest classes, if not _the _hardest that a student could take. She grinned and rolled her shoulders, the smell of expensive teachers' shampoo still in her hair. She took all her baths in the second floor teachers' bathroom now, and even went alone now. The Grey Lady kept her company.

The bell gave a deep dong and Transfiguration came to an end. People started packing up, and then remembered that McGonagall was their teacher and stopped still like statues.

"Thank you for remembering that you are my students until I release you!" She said airily. "For homework, I allow you all to take your candles back to your houses and continue trying to transfigure them. The student who brings me the largest, most colourfully marked caterpillar tomorrow will win ten house points. If I hear that any of you have abused this privilege by performing foolish or puerile magic, you will be in detention until you grow beards!"

Lucy opened her mouth, probably to mention that she wouldn't grow a beard any time soon, but McGonagall glared at her with such force that she actually went white. The students nodded and pocketed their candles, leaving in twos and threes to Lunch, Lucy strutting out with Polly and Anna, throwing a contemptuous look over her shoulder to Conny, who waited, hovering around her desk for McGonagall to talk to her.

"Miss DeHayersae." The professor said with a tired tone, sitting down at her desk. "Take a seat, if you please."

Conny sat opposite McGonagall, feeling like she was going to be told off.

"It is unfortunate," she began, picking up a quill, "That you are particularly good at my subject. You aren't really interested in Transfiguration; you are just… excellent at it. Your enthusiasm stems from natural ability, rather than a love of the magic."

McGonagall sighed and Conny suddenly felt very horrible. She'd been excelling without trying. The head of Gryffindor was right; she didn't have any particular attachment to Transfiguration.

"Now, don't deny it- I am not accusing you, Miss DeHayersae. Merely pointing out that you are missing out."

Conny frowned. "Missing out?"

"Yes. Are you doing any extra work? A research project, perhaps, or starting third-year magic? Miss DeHayersae, do not look at me like that, you are perfectly capable of completing the third-year course, from what I have seen of your wand work. You would have to learn a large amount of theory, yes, but your work in that area is above satisfactory as well. I would be a poor teacher if I allowed your talent to go to waste."

"But, Professor, I don't have any extra time for things like that. I do all my other classes as well."

McGonagall gave a particularly vindictive smile. "Oh, I'm sure exceptions can be made. Conyeri, I hear you do not enjoy… Astronomy?"

"That is… kind of correct."

"Kind of, Miss DeHayersae?"

"It's not that I don't enjoy it, Professor…" Conny said, trying to be tactful, and then decided to not bother; McGonagall could read her too well anyway. "I absolutely despise it."

In some incredible miracle, Professor Minerva McGonagall let out a soft chuckle and smile, so that the skin around her eyes wrinkled deeply. "You and I, I fear, are very alike. My husband often tells me that I was far too honest when he was my boss."

Husband? McGonagall had a husband? Who used to be her boss? Conny stopped her mouth from dropping to the floor and tried her best to not look so surprised, a feat in which she evidently failed because McGonagall gave her a withering look that told her not to overstep her bounds.

"Too honest?" She said. "Would it have been better to have said I love astronomy?"

"No, no, of course not. There is a dearth of honesty in our modern age; I surely appreciate it. I personally have little regard for Astronomy beyond its face value; while Professor Sinistra is quick to extol its virtues as a real science, there is… well, I have said too much. I believe that I could ask Professor Dumbledore to grant the same dispensation that he recommended for me to Professor Dippet- he was headmaster when I was a student here. The circle is due to continue."

"I'm sorry, Professor, I'm not sure exactly what you mean." Conny said, crossing her fingers under the table, hoping that McGonagall was going to say what she thought McGonagall was going to say.

"If you would like, I can arrange for you to do an advanced study of Transfiguration in lieu of Astronomy classes."

"Really?"

"Really." McGonagall said. "Though I stress that you will be losing an O.W.L, and missing even a year of Astronomy will ensure you will not be able to pick it up again."

"I don't care, I hate it anyway." Conny almost jumped out of her seat. "I mean- um, that's a shame, but if I'm so good at transfiguration, I should concentrate on that, right?"

"Well… Hogwarts focuses more on a well-rounded education until N.E.W.T level, but in exceptional cases… It is best to let the most vivid flower bloom than to deprive it of water until it is as dull as the others."

"Excuse me?"

"Never mind. Now, go to lunch, and I shall endeavor to sort things out for you."

Conny grinned and stood, hefting her bag onto her shoulder. "Thank you, Professor McGonagall."

"Oh, don't thank me yet." McGonagall gave her a wry smile. "I am going to work you into the ground, Miss DeHayersae, until you have not a drop of talent left at your disposal."

"Okay, Professor, if you say so." Conny dared reply cheekily as she was leaving the classroom. When she was gone, Professor McGonagall sat with her hands clasped together on her desk, having set down her quill. She watched the young girl leave- the young girl who had done more than her fill of helping Hogwarts already, and frowned. Talent in transfiguration was certainly unusual, as was a wand of… Sphinx whisker. Excellent for Transfiguration, of course, but she feared that young Conyeri didn't know that with every wand came some problems.

And with a volatile and tricky core like a sphinx whisker, prone to deciding quite defiantly whether or not it wanted to do as you told it, it took all a young witch has to make the right decisions.

-0-

Though it was indecently enjoyable to strut around Hogwarts like she owned the place, Conny did think she'd gone too far when she took a stroll into the trophy room to polish her plaque. It was along the far wall, which was covered by other awards for special services to the school. Over summer it had dulled only slightly, so she decided to see who else was a member of the special award club. Glen Jenkins, Margaret Peabody, Tom Riddle, two for Albus Dumbledore (dated from 1895 and 1897, wow), and then, as though fate wanted her to see it, a single, tarnished plaque belonging to Lucius Malfoy from 1971.

"Malfoy…" she breathed, touching the plaque lightly with her fingertips. "Lucius Malfoy. Have you any siblings that you have scorned?"

"Probably." Somebody said from right behind her, causing her to jump right up into the air.

"Rissa! Don't scare me like that!"

"Scaring you wasn't my intention, Conyeri." The Slytherin said lightly, coming level with her. "Though I admittedly find it strange that you are so intrigued by the Malfoy family."

"So you're not worried about me talking to plaques?"

"Not in particular, no." She brushed dust off Malfoy's plaque. "My family have had social dealings with the Malfoy family frequently over the years, and I am afraid I could name none I know who are 'scorned', as you were asking."

"Oh. Okay. Thanks, I suppose." She said, frowning.

"That is not to say that they do not exist, though."

"Pardon?"

Rissa sighed and briefly kneaded her temples like a much older woman would. "I do forget how little half-bloods like yourself know of the social strata to which the old Houses belong."

"Hey." Conny warned; no blood-bashing was going to happen under her watch.

"I meant no offense. Only that, if there was a member of the Malfoy family who had been scorned, it would be from within rather than without."

"Speak in plain English," Conny groaned.

"Must I spell it out for you?" Rissa said with her mouth slightly quirked, which was possible as close to emotional as her abuse of the Draught of Peace was ever going to let her get. "A scorned Malfoy would have been forcibly removed from the family."

"And in a family that prizes magical blood above all else…" Conny's brain suddenly clicked into life and her mind raced at a mile a minute, "The only reason you'd remove somebody would be if they had none. If they were a… squib. Practically a muggle."

"Indeed." Rissa nodded, a slight tilt of her head. "Well done on your award; let us hope that you turn out to be worthy of it."

"Hey, what's that supposed to-" But Rissa was already gone. "Damn you!"

Then a gobstones trophy told her to watch her mouth and Conny was silent once more. So, there was a squib in the Malfoy family- never mentioned, erased from History. Who had owned up to stealing the painting, when instead his relation Lucius had (for it had to be Lucius). So Méprise (to use his French moniker) had almost wanted someone to find this out. He'd led her straight to the true culprit. The question now was why? Why had the wizardly Malfoy stolen a painting of a winter countryside, and his muggle counterpart returned it?

Conny's brain began to ache, so she closed her eyes and stopped thinking. She felt a muscle twitch in her back, somewhere between Paddington and Euston Square on the Hammersmith & City line shaped scar that ran across it. It was almost a reminder of what meddling in affairs of Death Eaters- ex or otherwise- could result in.

"I should go to dinner." She said to her reflection in Malfoy's plaque. As she turned around to leave, she came across the one person she wanted most to talk to but least to encounter: Lucelia Ra. Their eyes met, hazel on umber, and for a moment time froze. Neither knew what to say to the other. Conny's hand twitched as Lucy's nostrils flared- silence stretched out around them, and Conny found herself suddenly blinded by the glare of the trophies.

"I came to see my plaque." She said lamely, her mouth dry and her tongue heavy. Why did she feel so many things? Conny could look around at the faces of nearly all of the other people in her year and know exactly what they were thinking. It was like they were two-dimensional figures of tissue paper; when the light shined right, you could see right through them. Was she wrong, different, to experience such depth of feeling so young? Hell, she couldn't even put a name to some of the things that cluttered her head.

"Me too." Lucy said quietly; guarded, speech behind the gulf of strangely viscous air between them. "I never pegged you for the trophy type, but I suppose things change."

"And some things stay exactly the same." Conny grimaced and dragged herself down to Lucy's level.

"I don't get it, Conny. One day, we're thick as thieves, and the next you ignore me."

"I don't want to be your servant. Like Polly and Anna and Rebecca. You can't order me around." Conny felt anger rising in her throat. "Why do you think the world belongs to you? That you can take anything and people will only like you more for it?"

Lucy's eyebrows rose. "Why do you judge everyone, each moment of every day? Nobody can take a breath in your presence without your opinion of them changing! You're always so… you think you're better than us all! Because you've got two nice parents in a nice house in a nice part of London- because you can do crap with your wand that we can't! Because you stopped Avery last year? You're looking so far inside your own head that you don't notice the way that other people look at you when they pass in the corridors! They're uneasy! They mutter and judge you back!"

A few blinks were needed in the shouting quiet that followed those words. Lucy never, ever had said anything to her like this before. Conny hadn't even known that Lucy felt that strongly. Her mouth opened and closed with no sound coming out. "Why… why didn't you say?"

"Because I know what you're like, Conny! You think you're this… this un-understandable person, but you're not! You say you know me, and if we're friends, that means I know you too. Trust me. I know you, but sometimes I forget that you don't accept me for who I am."

"Who you are?" Conny said, disgust seeping into her voice. "But Lucy, you're like two people sometimes."

"Or I'm just one person and I change what I do and don't act like depending on who I'm with."

"You really are a con artist, aren't you?" Conny said. "You give people what they want."

"Of course." Lucy looked at her, perplexed, and took a step closer, growing stronger in presence. "Would you be friends with somebody you didn't like?"

"Apparently so."

"Conny, that's not what I mean-"

"Then tell me what you mean! Speak English! I'm tired of people skirting around things with words!"

"I WANT TO BE LIKED!" Lucy roared. "I WANT TO HAVE FRIENDS!"

"Then be who you are! If people are going to like you, they'll like you as Lucy- not as Lucy-acting-nice or Lucy-acting-arrogant."

"But what if Lucy-me- isn't… isn't likeable?"

"You're just going to have to take that chance." Conny flipped a knut in the air, which landed tails on the floor between her and Lucy. "Hey- hey, Lucy, don't… don't cry. Rats, Lucy, don't you dare…"


	6. Chapter 5

Chapter Five: Lessons with McGonagall

Hallowe'en came like a corpse up from the dead- slowly, in a grasping, clawing kind of way, and was damp and unexciting for the most part. The feast, of course, was excellent, but Conny found herself unable to have a good time. At least before she had hated Lucy; now she wasn't sure how things stood between them, and didn't know which was worse. She and Jon were curled up in their favourite spot in the Ravenclaw Commons, by the triptych of Harvey Ridgebit and the Peruvian Vipertooth, deep in conjugating irregular verbs in the past tense, oblivious to the world. The Commons was draughty and Conny found herself shivering, and said so to Jon, who was kind enough to pull off his cloak and offer it to her.

"Conny." He said quietly, his curly mop of brownish hair falling over his eyes, which were soft and grayish, looking right at her. Conny gave a short hum of acknowledgement in reply. "Conny, you've been staring into space all through _venir_."

"Have I? I'm sorry, Jon, I'm just a little…"

"Distracted?"

"You got me." She sighed, casting her gaze down to the textbook they were working from. "I suppose I should be happy that I don't have to do Astronomy any more."

"Tu as de la chance." Jon muttered. "But then again, you have to do extra Transfiguration instead, and I think that ees maybe worse."

"For some people, maybe." Conny smiled, taking her wand out and transfiguring Jon's pencil into a caterpillar.

"Hey! I was using zat!"

"Accent." She chastised him.

"Verbs." He prodded the textbook in return. "And my accent ees much better now."

"Sure it is, but you do slip." Conny said truthfully, leaning back with her French textbook on her stomach. Over on the other side of the Commons, a seventh year boy was practicing levitating and kept wobbling precariously. She watched him a while, filtering out Jon and his sodding language with all its feminines and masculines. He looked peaceful on the surface, but the jerkiness of his movements suggested he was conflicted. Her dad had always taught Conny to look further than somebody's actions to judge who they were; in his line of business, understanding people was paramount. Was that too much judgment to place upon somebody right away? Perhaps.

"Right. I'm going to supper." Conny closed her book and shook introspection out of her head, replacing it with a more down to earth work-orientated persona. "I have to meet Professor McGonagall for extra Transfiguration tonight."

"You are tres strange."

"Oui." Conny grinned, Transfiguring Jon's school tie lazily into a shockingly mauve pair of knee socks. "But I'm also amazing."

Jon stuck his tongue out at her as they gathered their books up and tossed them into a cubby in the Commons before hurrying down the supper; the bell rang as they were being harassed by Peeves by the boar-shaped gargoyle on the fourth floor. Peeves was wiping custard over the vehemently protesting gargoyle, and as they rounded the corner decided to extend the honour to her and Jon. Though Conny managed to muster a weak shield charm to prevent most of the splatters, but the poltergeist wouldn't leave them alone until Luke managed to curse him with great gusto from behind the House Point hourglasses.

"Let's see how he enjoys _that _trailing after him for a week." He grinned with satisfaction. "You've got custard on your collar."

"Rats." Conny hurriedly tried to brush it off. She managed to spread the stain. "McGonagall will kill me."

"Here. Evanesco." Luke stepped forward and tapped his wand lightly to Conny's collar. The custard stain vanished immediately and left her rather closer to Luke that she'd imagined being. He was handsome and tall and dark and muscular… Conny imagined that he would probably be the hottest boy at Hogwarts if not for his devotion to Ally. That made him a lot less available. Oh well; Conny could still dream.

"Thank you." She said, blushing furiously.

"No problem." Luke patted her lightly on the shoulder. "Let's get to supper before Peeves comes back."

The table was spread with curries tonight, in honour of Diwali. Rows of lamps, floating, bobbing slightly as their flames flickered, had replaced the usual candles. Lights always made Conny feel better. She tucked into something she couldn't read the name of- Lucy was loudly translating everything, since it was written in Hindi (which she could read and speak somewhat, though English was her first language and Arabic her second), but chose to ignore her for now. That was a can of worms for a lower mood.

"So, why're you meeting McGonagall tonight?" Luke asked through a naan bread.

"Extra Transfiguration. She wants me to extend myself."

"That sounds painful."

"It is." Conny assured him. "Like, on Monday night she just put this mouse in front of me and told me to turn it into a gravy boat. It wasn't as hard as inorganic quantity to organic… but the equations were furious."

"Furious?"

"They made me furious. Four different circles I had to draw just to work out my mouse's adjusted Staford measure! Four!"

"Only four?" Luke asked cheekily, for which he got an onion bhaji in the face. "I'm only teasing. I'm proud of you, Conny. You're so smart; you're outpacing even the other Ravenclaws."

Colour rose in Conny's cheeks again and she looked down at her rice with a mumble.

"Well, I think it's freakish." Ralphus chose that moment to sit down not far enough from them for Conny's liking.

"We didn't ask for your opinion, Ralphus." Luke said coolly. "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it at all."

"You sound like my grandmother." He said.

"You obviously didn't inherit any sense from her, then." Conny spat. He was really beginning to get on her nerves. She could barely deal with Lucy; a wannabe Lucy was not compatible with her frayed nerves.

"Don't rise to his bait, Conny." Luke warned her, shooting icicles with his eyes at Ralphus. "I will dock points."

"And? It's your own house, idiot. And you wouldn't, anyway. Everyone knows you care too much about winning. I have no idea why Dumbledore made you head boy."

"Watch it, Crymge."

"Watch yourself."

Luke bent his fork in two with silent fury. He ground his teeth together in an effort not to curse Ralphus into the twenty-first century. "I swear by my wand, Ralphus Crymge, that if the opportunity ever arises I will have you punished for your behaviour."

Ralphus paled but turned away from Luke with a 'harrumph'.

"Luc, are you sure?" Jon asked quietly over pudding. "If you just swore what I think your swore… zat is a serious oath."

"I know." He spat. "I mean every word of it. That boy is a little shite now, and will be a bigger shite with more power when he grows up and gets a cushy job at the Ministry through his parents' contacts."

"Je il deteste aussi…" Jon muttered, but then collected himself. "Luc, those are serious threats to make…"

"I intend them to be more than threats." He said darkly, stabbing his bread and butter pudding with his spoon. "Ask McGonagall to teach you how to turn him into a slug."

"She'd probably oblige, seeing as how he's an uppity little hinkypunk."

Luke chuckled. "Woe the day you stop using hinkypunk as a swearword."

A bell rang in the distance- the clock tower chimed at the same time. Conny put her cutlery down and wiped her mouth. "Do I look okay for McGonagall?"

"You look splendid." Luke assured her with a wink. "Now, go knock 'em dead."

"Yessir." Conny stood and left, grabbing her copy of Intermediate Transfiguration from the cubby in the statue of Klickwurth McTiff outside the Great Hall and made the short journey to the first floor of the Defense Against the Dark Arts Tower, where McGonagall's Office was.

She stood outside the door, gathered herself together and then knocked.

"You may enter!" McGonagall's crisp Scottish trill came from the other side. Conny pushed the heavy oak (was it oak? Maybe. Conny was no lumberjack) door open and stepped into the low light of the office. McGonagall was behind her desk, which was against the thick mullion window that looked out onto the large training courtyard that Madam Hooch used for Quidditch lessons. A fire was burning high in the huge granite grate that was surrounded by low armchairs, covered with Gryffindor crimson and tiny little stitched lions. An oil painting of a moor in springtime took centre stage above the mantelpiece.

"Good evening, Miss DeHayersae." McGonagall said, setting her eagle-feather quill onto its stand and straightening her back. "Your promptness is appreciated."

"Uh, thank you." Conny said awkwardly.

"Please, take a seat by the fire with your books. I will be with you in a moment."

She found a squishy armchair that was near enough the fire to be warm but not close enough to be stifling, and waited for the Transfiguration professor to tidy her effects before she came to sit opposite Conny, substantially less poised than she appeared during the day. Her black hair, peppered with grey, lay tumbled over one shoulder in a loose plait. It was unreal.

"Now. I think before we dive into the subject, which I judge you a probably keen to, I am of the opinion that you and I should discuss how we are to structure your learning."

That sounded quite ominous.

"Sure, Professor. What were you thinking?" Came out of her mouth unbidden.

"I do not by any means want this to go to your head, Conyeri, but I opine that if you continue to excel at Transfiguration this year, I will apply to Professor Dumbledore for you to take your O.W.L. in my subject a year early."

"Seriously?"

"Do you think me somebody wont to joke?" McGonagall asked her dryly, and Conny shook her head. McGonagall was not likely to be joking at all.

"That's- I mean, wow, Professor, that's a great, um, honour."

"It is."

"And, um… I will try my best?"

"Your best is not good enough." McGonagall examined Conny's face with her keen, steely gaze over her square spectacles. "Conyeri, this is a big undertaking. I am entreating you to be sensible and studious with this. Transfiguration is possibly the most dangerous, volatile branch of magic, and the one that has the greatest potential for advancement of the wizarding world. Your talent could change the future. I want you to take this seriously."

"I do, Professor."

"Good." McGonagall took her glasses off and wiped them with the hem of her evening robes. "Now, I have re-arranged your schedule so that you can take your Transfiguration classes with the third-years. There is catching up to do on topics covered in the latter part of your second year, but that I will cover in this session. Monday and Friday evenings, you will report to my office for these private lessons. Afterwards you will return straight to your dormitory and woe betide you have a dearth of sense enough to get caught on your way back."

"Of course not, Professor." Conny agreed, her head spinning. Transfiguration with the third-years! That was amazing. Wait until Lucy-

Then she remembered that she and Lucy weren't talking. Rats. Her mood leveled out a bit.

McGonagall let out a breath and relaxed into her armchair, closing her eyes briefly. "First, recite to me Eosir's Constant."

"What?"

"It is a simple instruction."

"Okay. Um… Eosir's Constant is the constant calculated for ethereal resistance or presence of a defined matter in terms of its magical quiddity."

"List the factors that may alter Eosir's Constant."

"Like Staford Measure?"

"No, Staford Measure is constant as individually applied in the original calculation of the Constant."

"Oh." Conny thought a moment. "Um, the question of vitality effects the… the colour of the spell…"

"Define the colour of a spell."

"Its ethereal resonance, placed on the visible spectrum of light by the function negative log base Staford measure mass."

McGonagall cracked a small smile. "Very good. The other two factors."

"Um… Eesh, there's- ah, translation rate!"

"Which is?"

"Merlin… translation rate is directly proportional to translation gradient multiplied by… by personal magical attraction, divided by distance in prosechs to the power of ethereal turbidity, which is most often defined as…"

She lost the thread of the equation as symbols swum behind her eyes, but managed to grasp at the end of it. "Defined as turbid on the new moon and slack on the full moon, with intermediates between them."

"And the last factor." McGonagall asked quietly, her gaze set upon Conny's furrowed brow.

"Um…" Conny strained her memory. "I- I'm not sure. I think it might be signature?"

"There you are wrong. I would not have expected you to know it though, as it is not in either A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration or Intermediate Transfiguration. We cover it at N.E.W.T. level."

"What is it?"

"It is called magical enthalpy and to explain it would take you too far into seventh-year mathematic Transfiguration. I must commend you on remembering all of that; half of it is in Intermediate Transfiguration, which I had not expected you to have read yet."

"I did read it. I didn't understand it all, though, especially the convergences of Sharpe's Law."

"Just the convergences?"

"Pretty much. The rest seemed logical enough."

McGonagall regarded her, impressed. "Well, it seems as if I have not so overestimated you. Tonight we will review the second-year course, which I would think you would be comfortable with already. On Monday, we will do the mathematics for the third-year course until we are finished; I would say that by Christmas we will have covered the bulk of the theory, and then we will move on to the practical magic in the new year."

Conny wiped a sheen of sweat off her forehead, realizing that she had just earned the respect of a very powerful witch.


	7. Chapter 6

Chapter Six: Papers, Letters and the Hidden Archway

The winter term went on with cozy familiarity, and Conny even managed to forget her row with Lucy for her packed schedule. She divided her time between her schoolwork, which was excellent (all her teachers had said so; even Professor Snape had not been able to muster anything negative to say about her concentrated solution of Laughing Elixir), her extra classes with McGonagall (which were ridiculously difficult but nevertheless amazing) and her various friends.

With Jon she liked to study French and explore the castle, finding interesting rooms, some full of objects beyond her imagination, some completely empty save for a feeling of importance. Their talks about life and the world and what they'd do if they had a billion galleons took them from fireplace to fireplace, through games of wizard chess and backgammon, through packets of curiously tasty fudge and increasing layers of warm clothing as the weather took a turn for the worse. It was lovely. It was homely, and Conny knew that Jon would be her constant companion, her best friend, because he wasn't anything like Lucy at all.

Even Jon, though, had other friends; they sometimes hung out with Mark Arrit and Tilda Tirias, who often brought her twin brother, the doe-eyed Edwin, along. When not with these, Conny was swept up in the company of Az and Luke. With Az, she took long, frozen walks across the grounds, along the edge of the forest, protected from the frosty chill by cloaks and scarves, sometimes arm in arm, they laughed and spoke of Quidditch, of magic and of fun. Az loved playing pranks. Mostly, though, if the mood took him, Conny could find Az sitting by the side of the iced-over lake, with his messy blonde hair flying every which way, a thick rolls of parchment perched on top of a book on his knees as he wrote his poetry. Not that any of his Slytherin mates could know of this hobby, but he shared it with Conny.

Luke gave as much time to her as he could. What with him being head boy, quidditch captain and dedicated boyfriend to the sometimes frightening Ally, he didn't have a great deal of free time, and Conny still didn't quite get why he was spending it with her. They played Quidditch together, usually, and he helped Conny's keeping skills improve. Even though she fancied him a bit, Conny had come to accept that him and Ally were tight. Oh well.

The first thing to really throw her blissfully boring existence off-kilter came closer to the December than to October, in a drizzly November haze of Mending Charms, Smiling Draughts and the occasional French novel. Conny was deep in the Library on a large, darkwood table of her own, the contents of her bookbag strewn out so that she could access everything she needed. McGonagall had set her an essay on Vanishing Spells that she'd had to take four library books out to complete, and she was currently penning her conclusion, her hands stiff and aching. She rotated her shoulders to shake off some of the tension from being hunched over for so long and looked about the table, looking for the article she'd found in a copy of last week's Daily Prophet about the Large Hidden Cache (LHC), a huge experiment underneath Sweden that wizards were using to uncover secrets about magic. This week, apparently, they'd discovered where Vanished objects went, and Conny wanted to use the article as an example of ongoing study into the matter that would frame her conclusion nicely.

She cast her eyes around but couldn't find the paper. Thinking it must be in her bag, she reached over to rummage inside and indeed found a copy of the Prophet, but it wasn't the one she was looking for. It wasn't even from this year.

"What?" She asked it, frowning. The date read December 2nd, 1981.

_National Treasure Adalbert Waffling Dies_

_Millions Mourn Father of Modern Magical Theory_

"He wrote one of my textbooks." Conny observed quietly to herself. Madam Pince was presumably too busy looming over somebody else to bother with this dark corner of the Library. She read the headlines idly and wondered why she had this paper? Where had it come from? She cast her mind back. Ah, there! When she'd been confronting Douglas in the Hospital Wing last year and Madam Pomfrey had been about to catch her, she'd accidentally transfigured herself into a chest of drawers. This paper had been inside her, along with two stubby pencils, a King James' Bible and a dog-eared romantic novel called _Enchanted by Lust_, which she hadn't deigned to read yet. Of all the items to end up… Conny flicked through it, remembering that '81 was the year that You Know Who had been defeated. Shame baby Harry Potter couldn't have taken all his Death Eaters with him and saved Conny a lot of trouble.

_Missing Wizards- Have you seen these people?_

There was a whole double page spread of wizards and witches missing or dead. Even though You Know Who was gone… the world had still been half-destroyed. Families torn apart, friends missing or gone bad, neighbourhoods turned to piles of smoldering ash. Conny remembered it. She had grown up in the Dark Years. Her childhood had been dogged with protective charms, with the fear of being attacked, with selfishness. When the Death Eaters came calling to her neighbourhood, David had not fought. He was not that sort of man. He'd taken Elizabeth, who as a muggle had no chance, and seven or eight-year-old Conny safely into the hidden cellar of their house and stayed there four weeks. Four weeks they'd lived together in that room, cold and damp because David feared his magic alerting the Death Eaters to their location, hungry because they had to ration food. She may have been young and not really understood most of what was going on, but Conny had been scared. Really scared. At night, she'd clutched at her mother's hand, wondering if that noise was them coming, that chill was Dark Magic breaking through David's protections…

Conny shook her head, wiping dew from her eyes. That time was gone now. He Who Must Not Be Named had been defeated, hadn't he? The Wizarding world could breathe again. They could all be happy and free.

_Parents and friends of Miss F. Arrit, 28, would imploringly ask the Wizarding public to report any sightings of her. She is approximately five feet one inch tall, with brown hair and blue eyes, favours an orange brocade robe and wide-brimmed cocked hat. Wand 11 ½ inches Beech unicorn hair if found please return to the family._

Conny stared at that. Who could that be but Mark Arrit's mother? His aunt, maybe? Her heart swelled and she couldn't bear reading these any longer.

_Friend of Mr. C. Dearborn, 24, would ask Wizarding public to report any sightings of him. Five foot ten square, blonde, favours silver. Wand 10 inches Oak dragon heartstring, if found please return to Maenalus Malfides._

Certainly different, Conny thought. Just 'friend'. One friend. Maenalus Malfides, the only man searching for C. Dearborn. In a way, that made her more upset than the one for Miss F. Arrit, because at least her parents and friends were looking for her. All Mr. Dearborn had was Maenalus.

"Wait a moment." She spoke aloud, a stifling quiet having fallen. Her mind kept snagging though, refusing to connect anything. She gave a disgusted sound and rubbed her temples with frustration, staring at the writing, but it seemed to drift off the paper. Now was not the time. It was too late, her mind full of Vanishing spells. Still, there was something needed solving. As a Ravenclaw, her mind rebelled at the idea of leaving a puzzle incomplete, but she quashed it, rolling the paper up and stuffing it in the bottom of her bag. She must have left the right copy in her dorm. Conny, huffing, gathered her things together and dimmed the gas lamp that was lighting the table, hitching the schoolbag over her shoulder and exiting the Library at a pace, her hands ink-stained and her uniform rumpled.

No sooner had she flown up a staircase than she found herself blocked by a trick door. Angry, she kicked at it, swearing at the diversion.

Her foot went right through.

"Argh!" Conny yelped, overbalancing and falling through into another room. This one led into a corridor, low ceilinged, lit by eerie blue torches that flickered into life as she approached. Jon would love it; they'd never been here before. She doubted by the dust that anyone had in a couple of years. Interesting. Conny knew that the Hogwarts castle was littered and honeycombed with secret passages, so logically there would be some that nobody ever found. Perhaps she was the first to be here since it had been built! That was exciting.

"Circe, this is creepy…" Conny whispered to herself, suddenly wishing she had Az with her, or Jon at least. She contemplated going back, but this opportunity might never present itself again. She went on down the corridor. The ambient temperature fell slowly until the corridor stopped. It just stopped.

Conny looked at the wall with dismay. There should always be something cool at the end of a hidden passageway! What a letdown. Experimentally, she gave the wall a kick (it had worked for the last one) but only ended up with a sore toe. Sighing, she looked for odd bricks, a secret lever, something, but nothing presented itself.

Then she touched it.

A shock ricocheted up her arm, blue and cold like ice. Her hand shot backwards off the brick. From the spot where her fingers had brushed against the wall, a whorl of lambent blue lines spread, like veins through the body, thin, flowing as though an astral artist was breathing on the dull canvass of the wall. Conny's eyes widened as the lines came to cohesion, forming a marvelous luminescent archway embossed on the brickwork. Words were visible around the edges; the script was beautiful, so she stood closer to look at them. Where could this arch lead? How could she open it? Obviously something was going on.

She chanced to wipe dust off the wall where the words started.

_The years will pass through the sun and snow, yet you will change not. In the end your love will be your work and your work will destroy your fate. Trust not the gift-bearer, for the gift will hurt your heart and home and leave you lost in dreams._

No. It couldn't be.

Conny read through again. Still the same. Still her prophecy.

Impossible.

Nobody had used this passage in years. How could this be here? How could… why… no. No, she was just dreaming, surely. None of this was real. She was just stressed.

It pressed forward at her, the words seeming to get larger and more prominent as they swam in her vision. It was as if they were disagreeing, whispering, insisting that her fate was written here, in the dark depths of the castle.

"No!" She tried to challenge their irrefutable power. The words bound her into Tilda's prophecy. "NO!"

Dust shook from the rafters. Her hands were shaking.

Her eyes finally blurred with tears. "No."

So soft that nobody would ever hear it. Conny knew with sickening clarity what this was. It was the entrance to her destiny. It would only open for her, for the one to whom the prophecy was bound. It would open when she'd ended it, when her fate had been destroyed and she was left lost in dreams.

_The gift will hurt your heart and home and leave you lost in dreams._

_In dreams._

She took several steps back and shook her head. Silence rang in her ears like a clock's midnight peal. And like the coward she was, Conny DeH turned her back on the truth and ran. She ran back through the corridor, out the fake door, up the stairs, higher and higher until she came with a skidding lurch to the large door upon which Charlie the eagle-knocker hung.

"Conyeri." He greeted her with a raise of his eagle-eyebrow. "If you were older I'd suggest you'd been up to no good… why so flustered?"

She guiltily turned her head. "Nothing, just lots of work, ran up the stairs, that kind of thing."

"I'm sure. To enter, your question this evening is in Architecture." Charlie smiled. "The Ancient Romans made prolific use of the arch in their buildings, but who were the first to actually use them?"

Conny froze and looked at him evenly. "Charlie."

"Yes?"

"You're part of the castle, aren't you? You know what goes on." She checked over her shoulder.

"Some." He agreed somewhat sadly. "Though if it's any consolation, I feel sorry for you."

"That's great." Conny sighed. "Charlie, what's behind that arch?"

"You know I can't say."

"Please." She almost begged him. "I'll polish you every week as long as I'm here. Charlie, my destiny is behind that arch."

"And how terrible it would be to know your destiny at twelve." He shook his birdy head. "Give me the answer, Conyeri. I should not have teased you."

She sighed again. "It was the Mesopotamians."

"Correct; enter." Charlie's door opened unto the crowded common room. As she passed, Charlie spoke quietly to her. "You do not want to know what it is, Conyeri. Use your time wisely, because it is limited."

Too many portents. Conny closed the door behind her and hurried up to her dormitory; nobody paid attention to her. The Ravenclaw Common Room was full of chatting students and children enjoying their evening. It was late now, almost late enough for prefects to start patrolling. The fireplaces were surrounded by younger students cross-legged with story-books or letters home spread over their laps; on the sofas and squishy chairs their older counterparts held discourse. The talk of the day was Quidditch amongst a group of players, Luke included amongst them; to the left of the room, as she walked closer to her dorm Conny heard other groups talk about the sad split-up of wizarding metal band Bludger for my Valentine, and another debated the efficacy of pilchard as a cure for acne. It was very normal.

Conny plonked her schoolbag down and collapsed onto her four-poster with great fuss. How tired she suddenly was! And there was still so much to do- she had a potions write-up for tomorrow afternoon which she should do… and some practice of the Enlarging Charm… and…

She was snoring a minute later, fully clothed above the covers; her head blissfully clear of fate archways and missing persons. Lucy came in from a game of Scrabble and saw her, face softening slightly. There was nobody around to see. She carefully extracted Conny's duvet from underneath her and pulled it up and over, tucking her in. The nights were getting so cold; she'd catch an awful chill exposed like that.

Lucy sat down at her writing desk and took out a fresh piece of parchment.

_Cell Forty-Seven, Azkaban Prison, North Sea_

She paused, her quill hovering over the starting line. A small blot of ink dropped onto the paper and spread, ugly, on the yellow surface.

_Dear Khai,_

_I know I promised to write you often, Khai, but I've been so busy. My second year is going well. Professor Snape actually didn't frown at a potion I made yesterday, which is a bit of a miracle if you ask me! Anyway, Jahnen got a new job with Gringotts and just owled me about it- he looks a bit like a goblin so I think that was why he got it- and it's something to do with loans, which is right up his street because he likes money. I know they don't write you, so I'm going to tell you how things are going._

_Ali's girlfriend is pregnant! Finally! I can't wait to have a nephew! Or a niece, but I have a feeling it's going to be a boy. And as for Alexi, he's off in Russia doing something you told him to which seems to be dangerous and involves the Muggle Cold War and some big newcular weapons, I think they were called? Please don't get him killed, his flat is always tidy._

_Anyway, I hope you're okay(ish) and I still know you're innocent. When I turn seventeen and I can demand a retrial, I'm going to let them see my memories so they'll know you're not to blame._

_I love you, Khai._

_Love Lucy_

_PS- Can you buy me an owl for Christmas?_

She folded the letter up, slipped it into an envelope and dribbled a smattering of wax from one of the candles on her bedside table to seal, printing the seal of her ring down onto the congealing whiteness of the smear. The eagle, the ankh and the eye, contained in a triangle. The Ra family sigil wasn't familiar to her like it was to her brothers, who wore their signet rings with pride and never hesitated to throw their family name around. Lucy frowned, looking at the ring as though by examining it she'd solve some puzzle. Apparently not, because it remained cool and silver in her fingers.

He gaze was pulled over to where Conny was snoozing, oblivious to the world. A small smile tugged at the edge of her lips and before her mind had even processed the thought, she stood up and walked over to the side of her bed, looking down on her best friend. Or was she? Yes. Yes, Lucy was quite sure of that, even if they had fallen out. Conny was so cute, mouth slightly open, eyes flickering behind her eyelids. Her curly brown hair was tangled and messy around her face, and she'd sort of burrowed into the covers. Her fingernails were bitten short and dirty; there was a smudge of black dust on her cheek.

_You're an idiot, aren't you, Lucy? _She asked herself mirthlessly, sitting down on her bed, still looking at Conny intently. _She's a good person. You're not. You're a murderer, Lucy._

She shook her head at the thought. It wasn't her fault. Khai had told her that and he'd gone to Azkaban. His wand in his hand… but her words. Her hands trembled slightly, but she quelled them swiftly; Polly and Anna would be back soon, and she'd have to deal with what she'd done. _You know you're manipulative, Lucy. Don't lie to yourself. Cut them loose? I don't think so. You need them, because if you can't have friends you might as well have followers._

Stop. She dug her nails into her palms. This wasn't right. Her mind wasn't right; she needed friends. She needed Conny, most of all, and Jon who came with her as a sort of buy one get one free deal, albeit reluctantly. She'd even take Fatty and Stupid (Corfax and Mark Arrit, respectively), along with the baggage they brought, which was often in the form of Tilda Tirias, who she didn't trust at all, her brother Edwin, who was equally vague, and associated acts like Ginger Weasley.

Conny didn't know how many friends she had, did she? Unlikely. And Lucy only had access to them if she was friends with Conny… Merlin, Lucy thought, it's not me who's got all the contacts… it's Conny!

Not contacts. Friends.

Perhaps it was time to go to bed. She'd think of how to make it up to Conny in the morning.


	8. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven: Pals Versus Poets

December was in the painful but excited process of exploding all over the castle a week after the archway incident, and Conny had gone out to the Quidditch pitch to escape the mayhem of Christmas preparations. The tree Hagrid had picked for the Great Hall this year was too big to fit through the door and had gotten stuck, catching a number of first-years awkwardly in its branches like a giant fly trap. The suits of armour had been festooned with heavy tinsel and were complaining vehemently about it by attempting to strangle anyone who chanced upon them. In the kitchens, Peeves was wreaking havoc with the house-elves, and minced pies kept appearing in midair in the most haphazard of places. While Conny did enjoy to some extent the chaos, she needed a breather from Peeves' rude alterations of carols (along the lines of 'Little donkey, little donkey, I've put fireworks up your bum!' and other lyrical triumphs to that effect) and the floating candy canes that someone had bewitched to follow her everywhere she went. She had a feeling it was Luke.

Though she didn't have a broom of her own, Conny was welcome to use Az's old broom, a Nimbus 1500, which was still a good broom. It did have a fair list to the left though, which she had to compensate for, along with poor wind compensation, but it beat a school broom; she wouldn't trust one of those logs to take her five feet off the ground. She kicked off hard, making good time on a practice lap. Conny had found out that Quidditch was not like any other sport she'd played, muggle or wizarding: it required other skills, and some of them couldn't be learned. Brooms required wizard magic to keep them afloat, the faster you wanted to go, the more magic you had to put in. This in itself was physically taxing, along with the fine muscle control and reflexes that had to be present to steer and weave effectively. Balance was key, along with a strong tactical mind and spatial awareness- Quidditch was after all played very much in three dimensions.

Conny was gradually learning these things. She was by no means gifted, but did enjoy working at something outside the stuffy classroom she so treasured. Having Az as a coach was helping her progress even further, and Luke's occasional input was also really useful, even if she hadn't made the team.

Then again, neither had Lucy, much to her chagrin. Luke had correctly judged her behaviour as totally inappropriate when she'd nearly sent Conny plummeting to her demise and told her to come back when her attitude improved.

Of course, Conny had turned up to see Ravenclaw play, and cheering appropriately for Luke's gallant scoring of eight goals, and they both sat in the Ravenclaw stands for that, but they were still distant. Lucy kept opening her mouth as if to say something, perhaps to say sorry, but she never quite followed through with it.

So it came to the time then when both girls, being closer of mind and bonded by the irrevocable friendship of childhood that they had thought, both sought solace on the Quidditch pitch that afternoon. Lucy without, for once, her cadre of admiring girls; Conny with nothing but her own self. Taking to the airy, empty pitch for answers.

Lucy paused on the edge, seeing Conny perched on the highest goalpost, but tucked the quaffle she'd brought with her under her arm and kicked off, looping around to join Conny.

"Nice morning." She said evenly, her face giving nothing away.

"Out here, certainly."

"The castle is a madhouse." Lucy tested the ground.

"I know! Did you see-"

"-Poor Professor Flitwick-"

"-Robes transfigured into an elf costume-"

"Bet it was Boris."

Silence whipped around them like the brisk wind. A snowflake – or it might have just been a mote of dust caught in the sun – drifted past Conny's nose. The exchanged had been a great release of things, slipping so easily back into friendly banter…

"You want me to take a couple shots at you?" Lucy asked hesitantly.

"Sure."

The youngest Ra child backed further up and started shooting timid quaffle shots at Conny. "Lucy, you _can_ actually try and score."

"Okay." The next ball curved wide and brushed past Conny's fingertips into her far left hoop. Cursing she turned and gave Lucy a mock-glare.

Then it was like the slow progress of a reparo spell over the broken china of a mug; bits came back together, cracks melted into a completed, flawless product. Of course, you still knew that it had once been broken just by virtue of the fact that it required fixing, but for all intents and purposes the friendship was reborn, the disparate bodies finding tentative coalescence. It looked to have been easy, but Conny knew that neither party had gotten away unscathed. Lucy's sense of self, of identity, had begun the process of fraying that every young adult's does, and it would not be until it was too late that she found herself complete again. For Conyeri DeH, it was another stark reminder that the world was not as she would have liked it to be. A nagging certainty that she was the sole awakened person in a murky world of sleepers, walking hither and yon and opening and closing drawers without examining the contents.

Still, it was as whole as she'd felt all term.

The two of them took the opportunity, after their hesitant accord, to simply fly without the heavy weights of thought on their ankles. Lucy, quick as a whippet, wove and shouldered her way around the scoring circle she knew well, her grip firm, the wind tugging her raven hair out behind her until at the right angle it would seem that she herself was the sharp, diving eagle of Ravenclaw. They were both invincible, dark blurs outlined from the bright House colours of the stands by the frosty winter sun.

Az Spooks, watching them from the frozen Black Lake, felt the parchment on his lap pull his pencil towards it as though the two were lovers separated then reunited, each yearning to kiss the other. He smiled. Az was a poet, and a writer, deep in his chest, muscular as it may be from Quidditch. He loved everything about the game; the roaring crowd that blended into a single, monstrous entity pressing it from all sides. How the balls and players all moved in graceful curves through the air, cutting into the wind, marking their fleeting presence with the shining numbers emblazoned upon their robes. When Az Spooks looked upon the pitch from the vantage point of a seeker, he did not see golden snitches, quaffles, bludgers and broomsticks. He saw poems.

Of course, though, he thought as the pencil drew grey lines across his parchment, curling into the beautiful cursive born of calligraphy lessons taken as a younger child, he could not tell anybody. Not the Slytherins, his classmates and dormfellows, who sniffed the slightest scent of weakness like hounds on the hunt. The Gryffindors, he had to avoid, so as to maintain reputation and not anger his own noble House. Hufflepuffs raised almost as much suspicion, though he could pass off his aching need for companionship as a homework assignment if asked. Why was he in the library laughing with Gwenog Jones? Well, easy: they had been discussing work. They had been working on some project or another. They had been chatting about the recent Tornadoes-Harpies game. Was he _friends_ (a dirty word to a Slytherin) with her? Oh no, just acquaintances. _They_ were allowable.

Ravenclaws were the answer. Az was sure of that. Nobody ever ribbed you for hanging out with a Ravenclaw- yes, they were swots and the collective Slytherin ego ached often from the blues doing better than them in class, but they were cool. A Ravenclaw wasn't afraid to argue with you, spit at you if you gave them flak, and go behind your back afterwards and get even. Just never try beating one at being smart- they're good at that. And they're a free homework ticket, too.

So Az had met Conny, who was younger and a Ravenclaw. She liked poetry. She was funny and smart like her house suggested, but he'd been able to teach her quidditch, too, which was nice. He liked her, because nobody judged him for hanging out with him- not to often, at least.

"Ey, mate." Somebody would say in the Common Room as he tried to get through a Herbology essay or some such nuisance.

"What?"

"Who's your friend?"

"I have a couple, which one would you like to know about?" He'd reply snarkily. The boy would be weasel-faced and lanky, or stolid as cooling custard, or attractively blue-blooded. Those were the only items on the Slytherin student menu.

"The Ravenclaw girl. The one you were talking with on the third floor."

His mind whirred. "Conny?"

"Yeh. What year's she in?"

"Second."

His eyes would go wide. "Second? You pervy little nonce, Spooks!"

"I'm not at her, dolt; we're just friends."

The boy would look unimpressed and skeptical. Az would waver, would think he was losing face- a pretty face attached to an attractive seeker's body. He'd give in to the crass words the boy wanted him to say. "Well, for now. She'll be fit soon."

The boy would agree, lacing his fingers together. "Mm. She goes for greens?"

"She's twelve, paedo."

"Yeh, but she won't be for long, ey? And young girls're all… innocent and that."

Az would realize the ideas he'd put in the boy's head and would feel ashamed. "Keep your hands off her." He'd growl, using his growing stature to his advantage. People would be listening by now, and he'd again have to save face the only way Slytherins know how. "She's mine."

"All right, Spooks, calm your nuts down. She's yours. But if you ever have a fight or whatever, can I-"

So on and so forth.

It was for this reason that fourteen-year-old Az Spooks felt slightly wrong in spying on the girl he had so 'claimed' behind her back, all to save him embarrassment. He felt a sham, because he was pretending. Out here on the lake, too small from the castle to recognize and covered anyway in his grey Hogwarts hat and equally grey scarf to disguise his house, he was invisible. It was shocking how easily you come to associate faces and names with the four colours of Hogwarts' Houses- the greens, Slytherins, blues, Ravenclaws, the off-yellow of Hufflepuff or Gryffindor's proud red. Identity revolved around what colour you were. Without it, you simply did not belong. With it, perhaps you belonged a bit too much.

Still… though from here he could barely make out her features, Az knew that Conny was going to be beautiful. She was going to break hearts. Pale face, dark eyes, hair that curled itself bashfully over her shoulders and tickled her cheeks. Straight nose, good teeth. At the most disparaging, you could call her plain, but never mousy.

He felt flutters that shouldn't be there.

"One day." He told himself in a breaking voice, though nobody could hear it. "When she's older and I'm a better person, I'll ask her out."

For now, though, Conny DeH was as far away from him metaphorically as she was physically. Az frowned and finished what he'd been writing. A short poem.

_Cut from chess stone, all darks and whites,_

_The lady of the wind smiles,_

_The lady of the wind laughs,_

_And she is oh so faraway, so faraway._

_Fly away, ghost boy, never to touch;_

_Fly too close and you hurt under her sun-_

_The lady of the wind._

Az Spooks wanted to crumple the poem up in anger, but instead neatly folded the parchment sadly, until it was small enough to fit in the inside pocket of his coat. He also wanted to sigh dramatically, and because nobody was watching, he allowed himself the moment to stare at the two dark figures cut against the sky. Lucy Ra was dangerous. He knew that. She'd already made Conny so upset; Az didn't like that. But there was time, always time, to see how things panned out. Az Spooks was a seeker; he was patient, waiting for the right chance. When he took it, he would make sure that Lucy Ra wasn't the bludger rushing up to take him out from behind.


	9. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight: Study, Girl, Study

The end of term came unexpectedly for Conny, who had so deeply fallen into books that she had failed to realize that holidays were approaching. Transfiguration was eating up her life and she had no idea of how to tell Professor McGonagall that she wasn't sure about studying for the early O.W.L. What had seemed like a great idea now was palling. The work was hard, and Conny was putting more of herself into it than she could afford to spare. Like the child she was, though, she stuck at it, because at some point she'd realized that McGonagall might be a bit proud of her, and there was no way she'd let her down. Not austere old McGonagall, for whom Conny was actually developing a bit of a soft spot. She was quick to jump on anyone who complained about her homework or her teaching style, like a yappy little dog. She was at the age where it was acceptably cute, though, so no harm done to her reputation.

It was quite the reputation at that, though. When in passing conversation the name Conny DeH came up- not that it did often, but if it did, it was always used with the surname contraction that Luke had popularized. A nickname always opened doors.) They spoke about her as the Transfiguration whizz kid, the girl who got maimed when Douglas Ohsem went crazy last year ("poor girl") and occasionally in relation to Lucy, who maintained the popularity mantle that her name and brothers gave to her.

Conny was scribbling out a page of heinously messy sums- something along the lines of:

Integral of x = third deriv cons. E = 2q+9p/x Staford measure (hereby s) to power integral x = measure body at half constant dipole trans state s

Integral of x = 8 r 1/6

Ascribe to position of reson, taken as standard for unicorn hair (cited as eighteen power distance in _Intermediate Transfiguration_), therefore s for integral x must be the following space/power action:

Below that jargon was a drawing of the exact wand movements needed to vanish a person, calculated by careful application of theory. Conny could never vanish a person herself- that was strictly N.E.W.T. territory, the actual magic, but McGonagall had set her a page of problems relating to vanishing that got more and more complicated, and this was the last one. Question One had been to vanish a matchstick, two a fountain pen, three a cricket… and finally a human. The question had wormed and squirmed a round dozen of different sums from her, because it had only given the information needed to work out the wizard in question's Staford measure of personal magical attraction, and then asked for the wand movement. No guidance through the half constant dipole equations, no, that was too easy for her. So it had come to this.

Conny didn't like not knowing what she was doing with her wand. There was always a reason that you jabbed or you waved it in a circle of this diameter or circumference, if you held it close to your body or far away. Wands did things mostly by the magical laws that governed the world, but sometimes… sometimes even Professor McGonagall conceded that magic would never be explained totally. It has a consciousness of its own, a strange life that lends to those who use it the same uncanny vibrancy. Equations and theory were just that: theories. And wizards, tiny little hunchbacked wizards in dingy Newcastle apartments with noses gone blue from rubbing them in parchment ink as they pore over sum after sum are wasting, ultimately, their time. Magic is alive. Living things cannot be compartmentalized into obeying this law or that rule; they shirk the calming constant and brazenly battle against probability. Statistical truth means nothing to a living thing, because its existence, while relying on base laws, is not limited to pre-programmed modes of action determined by a tiny Scouse wizard on a rainy Tuesday in 1955.

The fires were dying. Luke tapped her on the shoulder. "Conny?"

"Hullo?"

"It's time you got to bed."

"But it's only half ten."

"You're twelve. Get some sleep or you'll be too dozy to get up for the train tomorrow."

Conny blinked. "Hang about. Train?"

"Yep. Train. The big, steamy red one that goes from London to Hogwarts and back again- you know the one?" He teased.

"Of course I do! It's just- it's the end of term already?"

"Yep."

Conny blinked again and looked down at her ink-stained hands and then over at Basil Fronsac's portrait. He nodded sagely at her and chuckled into the glass of port he was nursing, halfway through what looked like a good book. The old headmaster has taken a liking to Conny.

"Oh. I didn't realize- I haven't packed!"

"Then I suggest even more strongly that you get up to your room." Luke chuckled. "You doing anything nice for the holidays?"

"Er- no. Just home with my parents."

"Lucy not coming over?"

"She's staying with some great-aunt in Luton and working in a café."

"Seriously?"

"Yep." Conny remembered the conversation well. "I'm going up now. Thanks for shaking me out of that."

"No problem- have a good Christmas!"

"You too." Conny scooped her work up into her arms and tottered up to her dorm. She'd have the same dorm all seven years, sharing it with the same four girls. The new first-years got the room just vacated by the graduating seventh-years and kept it until they themselves left. Dumbledore, when asked, opined that it brought with it a sense of constancy.

Conny had been lucky enough to inherit the room at the very foot of the spiraling staircase that led up the girls' dorms towerlet. While this meant that she heard what was going on in the dressing room the loudest, it also made the trip to her room and back less onerous. The poor third-years, the year above Conny, had the crippling trek up to the top room to contend with for seven whole years. She liked her room. It was very even; everyone had a bed, a window, a chest of drawers and a wardrobe, with a big boiler in the middle to spread warmth out. Anna and Polly were chatting about a wizarding band with a lead singer they fancied (this year it was the five-piece factory band The Wanded)(and to rectify a gross misdemeanor of generalization, Polly fancies the shaven-headed one, Anna prefers the blonde). Rebecca Dannat, in Conny's opinion much less of a simpering idiot than the other two, was reading a novel called _The Wizard in Oz: Australia by Broomstick _on her bed sucking an acid pop.

Lucy was playing chess against herself. A strange sight, to those who know Lucy Ra, or indeed knew any of the Ra brothers during their reign of terror at Hogwarts. Lucy never did anything alone. She never walked by herself, was seldom seen without a partner immediately in any lesson; she was followed around by friends into breakfast, lunch and supper, to the toilet and to the showers, too, which was more disconcerting. Lucy Ra did not play chess by herself.

"Check." She muttered as Conny dumped her work on her desk and gave a theatric huff. Lucy, sparing a glance at the top parchment covered with fiddly sums, made a face. "Your affair with Transfiguration is getting gross, Con."

"So are your unwashed socks." Conny threw a pile of Lucy's clothes off her bed; how they got there always remained a mystery, but Conny suspected nargles.

"Touché." Lucy muttered. "Is that checkmate?"

Conny peered over to the board. "No- you can still castle."

"Damn- I forgot that. There."

"Why're you playing by yourself?" Conny asked. Polly and Anna were giggling over a 'Which member of The Wanded is your perfect guy?' quiz in Teen Witch Weekly and Rebecca had her nose firmly lodged in the inside spine of her book. It was bizarre. Somebody was supposed to be plaiting Lucy's hair or asking her opinion on the colour of one of their moles or some such thing.

"I told them I wanted to play by myself." She shrugged, but her eyes said different. They said: 'I'm serious about this friendship thing. I will give them up in a heartbeat if I can keep you.' It was terrifying.

"Cool. I need to pack."

Lucy shook her head, pointing to Conny's open trunk. All her belongings were neatly folded and packed. "I had some spare time."

Now all sorts of odd had broken loose. Lucy wasn't lording over her followers, and she was doing other people favours. It must be the Imperius charm.

Or was it? Conny frowned at her own internal monologue for being so harsh. If it was so odd for Lucy to be a kind, generous roommate, then that meant that she had a very low opinion of her normally. Ach.

"Wow. Thanks." Conny's eyes flickered from the trunk to the lonesome chess-playing Lucy and back.

"No problem."

The awkward silence was almost painful.

"So…" Conny bit her tongue. "Cast any good spells lately?"

The withering look proffered by Lucy in response to that flop of a comment indicated that this was not the time, however nice Lucy might be acting, for chumminess.

"I'm going to go to bed, then." Conny said to the suddenly very quiet room. The collective six eyes of the other occupants of the dorm (bar Lucy, who was already looking back down at her chess game) seemed to be pushing pins into various parts of her body. Her mood, which was awfully odd to begin with, soured, and she got into her pyjamas quickly and lay in bed pretending to sleep, listening to the girls she lived with.

The different things going on around her puzzled Conny, especially in her own room. She knew it was naïve to assume that all people her age were as… she hesitated to use the word 'mature' as her, because it felt big-headed to call herself more mature than other people. They'd all been through the same thing, the war, hadn't they? How could they stay so childish after that? How could Mark Arrit laugh and mess around when his mother was missing? Was she still missing, even? Ach. Did Polly and Anna fill their heads with useless crap because they wanted to think of anything _but_ their pasts? Did Rebecca prefer the world of her novel to the one she'd grown up in? Was Lucy's solo chess game representative of the fight going on behind her eyes, good versus bad, black versus white? Or was she playing both sides herself to figure out which she was meant to support?

Then again, Polly and Anna and Rebecca and even Lucy hadn't faced Avery last year. They'd never been tortured by the Cruciatus curse. Douglas Ohsem hadn't carved a ruddy great scar across any of their backs. Conny understood then, after considering it, why they were so comfortable pretending the war hadn't happened. For them it was over.

Conny knew it wasn't. For some time now, she'd known that though You Know Who's physical body may have gone, and he'd stopped killing people, he remained on. He was like a thick, black tumour on the hearts of his followers; though he may have left, his ideas, his plans, lived on to grow and fester until they spread throughout the whole body of the wizarding world. Avery was but one of those who would still risk it all to further the plans of… him. Conny knew the name, but it was so feared, so despised, that she'd even stopped using it in her mind. The nebulous figure of some manifestation of all that is evil in a black cloak.

Somewhere within those troubled thoughts, Conny managed to drift off into a fitful sleep, punctuated with vivid flashes of a chess game in which, puzzlingly, all the pieces were people she knew. Lucy was the queen, who kept taking and taking her friends, one by one, until Jon was a cowering knight in her line of fire. Az, her other knight, blustered forwards, but then was challenged by Professor Atremidus, a bishop, offering tea and custard creams…


	10. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine: House Visits

Morning was far too bright for Conny, whose dreams had left her tired. All the craning over dusty books and rolls of parchment by candlelight was ruining her vision. A headache was pounding in between her brows. In years to come, she'd come to recognize these symptoms as a hangover, but at the moment she was only twelve, very tired and not feeling very well. Winter cold coming on.

In true wizard fashion, the Hogwarts Express had a spectacular breakdown just outside Sheffield. Apparently some idiot had slipped a pregnant ashwinder into the fire that fed the boiler and made the engine run. It had promptly laid eggs that had, as ashwinder eggs do, caused a massive explosion and destroyed a the whole engine. The train sat steaming, filled with foul black coal-smoke, for forty minutes as an emergency repair wizard apparated in from Nottingham and fixed everything up with some serious wandwork. The excitement of something unexpected happening was lessened by the horribly sore throat anyone within two carriages of the boiler got from the fumes, the watery eyes and the thin layer of coal dust that settled on everything.

The platform at King's Cross was awash with distraught parents who had assumed that, as the Hogwarts Express was an hour late, the whole train was a burning wreck littered with their childrens' smoldering corpses. That wasn't the case, but Conny's parents suffocated her in a hug to end all hugs when David collected her and took her back into muggle London where Elizabeth was waiting. They took the tube home and were settled with fish and chips from the local chippie around the corner on Keats Street (their neighbourhood was full of roads named after literary figures. Shakespeare Crescent, Donne Way, Marlowe Avenue, and Conny's own street, Poet's Place), when there was a knock on the door.

Call it paranoia, or just precaution, but whatever it was, it had its roots in the war. David's wand came out quickly and his body tensed. It could just be a muggle postman who was looking for the house next door and messed up your postcodes. It could be carol singers or brownie guides selling cakes or the old woman who delivered the parish magazines. Then again, in experience, the knock at the door could be a ministry official telling you that someone close to you has died. That you're being relocated for your safety. Or a death eater calling to torture information out of you.

He stood and walked out into the corridor, looking through the peephole out onto the street. Connie tiptoed to the door to look out at him. David frowned and seemed to debate whether or not to open the door, but in the end did.

"P-Professor McGonagall?" He stammered as the witch, clad in fine slate-grey robes trimmed in indigo, stood serenely on his doorstep.

"Good evening, David." She nodded at him, her eyes flitting to Conny. "I am terribly sorry to intrude. May I come in?"

"Er- of course, of course." He stood aside to let her through. McGonagall swept into the kitchen and smiled briefly at Elizabeth, who blushed furiously and stammered something about putting the kettle on for tea.

"Oh no, Mrs. DeHayersae, I would ask you and your husband for a few minutes of your time with regard to Conyeri."

They both looked at her, wondering if she'd blown up a Hogwarts tower or something so terrible as to incur a visit from the Deputy Headmistress. David sat down beside his wife across the kitchen table from McGonagall, the fish and chips hastily pushed to one side.

"I am to believe that you do not keep up regular owl correspondence with Conyeri while she is at school," McGonagall began. "And as such she may not have explained to you her unique situation."

David gave Conny a look that plainly said 'what, by Merlin, have you done this time?', but remained tacit but for a nod.

"Conyeri is an exceptional student." Elizabeth looked relieved. "Even above the other Ravenclaws in her year, she shines in my subject - Transfiguration – and as such I have been giving her extension tuition."

Conny was pleased that her parents looked impressed. It wasn't out of modesty that she hadn't told them of her affinity for the subject, but rather than she'd been so caught up in her work and sorting out her relationship with Lucy that she hadn't thought to owl them about it. David shot her a little look that this time said 'I'm impressed- McGonagall is praising you, which must mean you're scarily good'.

"That's… that's great. We had no idea, other than her grades from last year, which were very good." Elizabeth said. The kettle boiled in the background but went ignored.

"I have secured permission for her to take her Transfiguration O.W.L a year early from the Ministry and from the teacher at whose expense she would be doing so."

"What subject?" David asked.

McGonagall's lip curled as she smiled ever so slightly. "Astronomy. Proficiency for the subject does not run in your family. As I recall, it was you and Ewan Liramy who charmed all our telescopes to show Madam Pince in a bathing suit."

"That was never proved." Elizabeth looked affronted as David raised an eyebrow and winked at Conny.

"Indeed. I would like your permission to do this first, however, because it will disrupt her timetable somewhat." McGonagall said.

"It's brilliant." Said David. "I never would have thought it. I was rubbish at Transfiguration."

"Rubbish is an overstatement. You merely lacked… application, as I remember."

"I was rubbish, Professor." David chuckled. "To know that Conny is good at your subject is great. I'm fine with it if your are, Liz?"

She thought about it and turned to Conny. "What about you, Conny? Do you want to do this?"

"Yes!" Conny exclaimed.

"Okay, but what about your future. From what Davey has explained to me about wizard O-levels and A-levels, I guess that you'll get the transfiguration one early, but the Astronomy one not at all. I know it's early to think about your future, but will dropping Astronomy now mean that you can't get very many jobs or a place at university on some courses?"

She spoke sensibly, and Conny actually stopped and thought about it. She didn't know if you needed Astronomy to do a lot of things, so she deferred to McGonagall.

"Astronomy is not generally required for most vocational courses after N.E. , unless the course itself is about Astronomy or weather-magic. Some potions courses like Astronomy but aren't fussy." She said. "And I would argue that getting an early O.W.L. is a great advantage. It means that Conyeri can sit her N.E.W.T. early as well, and in her seventh year expand her study. Perhaps write a thesis or do research into a particular area. That would endear her to the top universities in Britain, and to any vocational course as well."

"Oh." This took Elizabeth aback. "Well, when you put it that way…"

"I want to do it." Conny said quickly. "I've already been doing some evening classes with Professor McGonagall. We're really ahead. I'm going to have finished the second-year course soon."

"If you want to, sweetheart, then we'll give our permission in a heartbeat." David smiled.

"Agreed." Elizabeth nodded.

McGonagall also offered a small grin. "Well, that is excellent. With that formality over with…"

She clicked her fingers and a huge, heavy pile of books and parchment appeared on the table with a thud. Several dusty tomes, a whole back catalogue of Transfiguration Today issues, along with lots of parchment full of questions and calculations to be done.

McGonagall's grin widened into a wry smirk. "This is your holiday work."

The pile towered high over the table. David looked afraid, Elizabeth aghast. Conny gulped and glanced up at the top of the pile, taller than David would be when he stood up. Brilliant. Just excellent. A holiday full of more schoolwork.

"That's… nice of you, Professor." David commented in the silence. His face turned amused and his gaze fixed on Conny. "I'll make sure she does all of it."

"Very well." McGonagall stood up. "I'll send one of my nephews by floo powder to drop off next week's work, too."

"What!" Conny gasped.

McGonagall chuckled. "Only joking, Conyeri."

She exhaled with relief. There were enough books to kill a person already there! It would take her the whole holiday!

"You're right. You won't do all of this in a week." McGonagall said. "A few days should be sufficient."

Conny shouted "Professor, that's not fair!" into the air where McGonagall had stood half a second previously. She had vanished with a crack and a thin puff of silver smoke.

The kitchen was briefly silent.

"She was kidding, right?" Asked Elizabeth, eyeing the tower of knowledge on the table.

"You never know with McGonagall." David replied sagely.

-0-

It simply refused to snow that holiday. Connie had a week and a half to kill before her relatives started arriving for the big Christmas blowout that was the DeH family festive feast. And by kill, she meant wallow in even more work.

By day four, her room was oppressive to such a degree that she roamed about the house, finding new and uncomfortable positions upside down on the sofa or under the kitchen table in which to study. It was doubly annoying that although her father's magic interfered with her Trace enough to allow her small transgressions, such as levitating the telly remote over from the other sofa, the ministry were bound to catch wind of semi-powerful Transfiguration going on in a house that housed David DeH as it's only legal wizard, who severely lacked ability in that field. So she had to swallow book after book of theory with no accompanying practical experience. Boo hoo.

Since she really didn't need the protection of her House and it's Trace interference, as she wasn't doing any spells, Conny began to wander. First, out into the garden to sit in the Wendy house, but David was installing the massive Christmas tree that dominated nearly the whole space and asked her to leave. Conny wandered out into the neighbourhood. Though predominantly muggles lived around, she recognized a few wizarding families with whose children she'd played with when she was younger. The MacLavens of 4 Milton Court were out stringing reams of frightful Christmas lights across their front porch, failing so miserably as to prompt the elderly muggle Mrs. Klein across the road to venture out in her slippers to explain to them how they worked (she was by now inured to the eccentricities of her neighbours).

The Doherty quartet of 19 Bunyan Drive was visible through their frosted windows watching television. Their daughter Alyssa must be a seventh-year or already have left by now, Conny thought, remembering her vaguely. Always very… blonde and buxom, now she thought about it. Never without a boyfriend. She chuckled remembering how the Dohertys would be down the local pub, the Byron, known colloquially as the 'Lecher' after Byron's reputation as a bit of licentious lover, complaining about Alyssa's latest boyfriend. Either he was too spotty or too alternative or he had bad grades or he wasn't in Slytherin, in which Alyssa, with her batting eyelashes and was of snaking her way into boys' hearts, definitely belonged.

Within her wanderings, covered in a thick coat and wearing a truly disgusting magenta wooly hat that sat like a fat, resplendent bagpuss on her head, sent to her by Corfax and evident by its state, knitted by him, Conny passed the boundary of her 'neighbourhood'- Keats Street, just past the chippie. Unfamiliar territory accosted her. The streets were all called Colliery Walk and Furnace Avenue and Conny was sure that she didn't know any poets by that name. Gosh, she might even have moved postcodes! How exciting. It was here, however, just off a tiny spindly street named Malachite Hill that sloped with terrifying incline far beyond what any muggle car should realistically manage, that Conny found the House.

House was a strong word for it. She knew immediately that it was a wizarding residence of some kind, though signs of muggles having entered it remained. Set back from Malachite Hill in a sort of alley, it comprised of space of wall about three metres across with a chained-shut door and a single, broken window. Corrugated metal dustbins surrounded its front and wrappers from burger bars and plastic supermarket bags had gathered to a pile in one corner. Cigarette butts and a few broken syringes had been swept up underneath a larger wheelie bin. It was not a particularly salubrious place, but Conny fell in love with its mystery immediately.

Muggles who passed the alley by didn't much care to use it. Occasionally a resident would come and chuck a black binbag full of rubbish into the wheelie bin, which was only emptied every two weeks or so by grumbling rubbish men who pulled it out, emptied it into their trucks and pushed it back in. None of them even looked at the door and window, like the house wasn't there at all.

The first time Conny visited, on that first breach of her neighbourhood boundaries, she hadn't entered, afraid there might be drug addicts or terrorists inside. She'd gone around and up the parallel street, but there was no indication that the house existed on that side.

On the twentieth of December, two days before her thirteenth birthday, Conny opened the front door, her wand out just in case. She knew you were allowed to use it in self-defense, and she'd rather go to prison than be killed anyway. She was too young to go to Azkaban and she didn't think the Ministry of Magic would hold killing a Death Eater against her anyway. Not that she knew how to use a killing curse either way, but it was the thought that counted, right?

The house did not make a great first impression. It had obviously been neglected for at least three or four years, and smelled of creeping mould and mildew. It was freezing inside, and she could near rats somewhere. It was also pitch black; with not even a single sliver of light making it's way in from any windows except, Conny supposed, the broken one upstairs. She was sorely tempted to cast _lumos_, but did not want to break the law.

She came back the next day with a torch and an air rifle she'd borrowed from Barry Barnes, a muggle boy obsessed with guns who lived across the road. She decided that she'd shoot any Death Eaters or rats she came across because she didn't want to get arrested and she probably couldn't do magic well enough to fight a full-grown dark wizard anyway.

Now armed and dangerous, she found her way by torchlight around the house. It was obviously magical; about twice as big on the inside as outside, though that wasn't saying much. It was really tiny, with a small, fetid kitchen and a disgusting toilet downstairs, and upstairs was only one room. Then again, it was a crazy room.

The first thing Conny thought when she pushed the door ajar was that a host of ghosts lived here. The room was bare on the floor, with splintered wooden boards. Through the smashed window had come the weather, leaving a patch of mould on the floor around it. However, surrounding the room, all along the edges, were draped white sheets that seemed to have stood the test of time and weather far too well. Conny reached out and felt one; a small ping of magic ricocheted through her fingers. So this was definitely a wizard's house.

The white drapes seemed so sacred, unsullied by the ravages of normal life, that she couldn't bring herself to look under them.

The house was certainly a strange place. Though it seemed that there were no traces of the wizard or witch who'd once lived here, little things gave clues. There was a single, battered pointed hat on the lopsided hatstand, no doubt hosting a family of doxies. There was a crushed photo frame in the kitchen. A whole horde of jars full of murky water of different colours set on the counter.

Had the wizard who'd lived here left in a hurry? Where was he now? Who had he been?

She resolved then to do something about the house.


	11. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten: The Glass Spider

"Please, Professor?" Conny begged, her best doe-eyed look on full power. "I need this, please?"

"I'm afraid not, Conyeri." McGonagall sighed, sitting down in the DeH living room sipping tea. "It's just not possible. I haven't the contacts and there is no basis for your request."

"Yes there is! You've given me so much work to do, but I can only cover the theory. I don't understand half of it without feeling the magic, saying the incantations, you know how it is! It's at the point where I'm at a block. I can't move onto reverse location spells because I haven't physically done the normal location spell in the first place! Jackot Logaine says in his article in Transfiguration today that you first need to find the magical line you made pushing a quantity through the interetherial space before you can understand the forces involved in bring it back, but since I can't do practical magic because of my Trace, I don't have a magical line to use in the first place!"

Conny blurted all this out quite desperately to McGonagall, who she'd owled with her Dad's owl, Beethoven, just yesterday, asking to talk. She wanted to do up the house on Malachite Hill, but needed magic to do it.

"No, I'm sorry, but it just isn't possible." McGonagall said again, helping herself to a ginger nut biscuit. "The law can be bent in many ways, but even wizards have lines that we do not cross. The Trace operates for the good of all of our young wizards and cannot be lifted."

"Why?"

McGonagall took a moment to finish dunking her biscuit in her tea and collect herself. "Because, Conyeri, the Trace is very powerful magic. You may not know, but there is a quill in the Headmaster's Office at Hogwarts that writes down the name of every child born with magic in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland- the United Kingdom, in other words. Those names are submitted to the Trace Office at the Ministry, who will, on that child's eleventh birthday, place a powerful enchantment called the Trace on them."

"Yes, but what can't it be lifted?"

Irritation began to shift under McGonagall's reserved demeanor. "If you ever have the misfortune to end up in the Trace Office, you will find that it has a whole wall full of small, glass, balls, each ascribed to the name of one child and embedded in the wall. When magic is used by or around a child, they cloud up. Blue for far away or small, simple spells, purple for nearby and stronger magic and red for very close or very dangerous. Once a ball is enchanted to connect to the magic of a child, it cannot be removed from that wall until it shatters on their seventeenth birthday."

"Oh." Conny cast her eyes down. "So I can't get it lifted, then?"

"Correct. It is linked to your magic profoundly." McGonagall nibbled at another biscuit. "In special cases the Office can be alerted to the case in which a child who is not usually surrounded by much magic is to visit an environment in which they are, but this is rare."

"Even with my Dad's magic interfering, they'd still see that I was doing spells, wouldn't they?"

"Correct again. It is almost always obvious whether the child or the adult is doing the magic, I am afraid."

"Okay." Conny was annoyed inside. "I'm sorry to have made you floo all the way here, Professor."

McGonagall shook her head slowly. "It is really no trouble. And Conyeri; do not worry about the practical spells for now. I will ensure that you get as much time as you need to master them when you are at Hogwarts and can use magic freely. For now, do as best as you can."

"Okay, Professor." Conny stood, as was polite, to observe McGonagall leaving.

"That was excellent tea, Mrs. DeHayersae." The severe Scottish witch called into the kitchen, where Elizabeth was washing lunch's dishes. "But I must be going."

McGonagall stepped up to the fireplace and took a large pinch of floo powder, reading to return back to her cottage in Hogsmeade, when Conny remembered something.

"Wait, Professor!" She said and ran upstairs to her room, rummaging in her sock draw looking for something. She found and grabbed it, careening down the stairs with such reckless abandon that Bach yowled and jumped out of the way (he'd been lounging on the bottom step). "Here."

She extended a Christmas Present out to Professor McGonagall with very pink cheeks.

"You really needn't have, Conyeri." McGonagall said, surprised.

"No, I did. You've been great giving up your time for me and I'm really glad that you think I can do well, even if I can't do proper magic in the holidays." She blurted, face burning.

"That is…" McGonagall turned and smiled, accepting the present in the hand that wasn't holding the floor powder. "That is the most lovely thing a student has done for me in a long time."

Conny's blush was now redder than Bill Weasley's Hair. "M-Merry Christmas, Professor."

"And a Merry Christmas to you too." McGonagall stepped into the fireplace, tucking Conny's present under her arm. "Be sure to extend my good wishes to your father when he gets home."

"Sure thing." And then, with a whooshing sound and the momentary roar of floo powder's characteristic green flames, McGonagall was gone.

Conny exhaled for the first time in what seemed like several minutes, leaving the living room to take McGonagall's finished cup of tea to be washed up in the kitchen. Elizabeth had moved on from the dishes to mopping the floor.

Conny watched her mop for at least thirty seconds before her brain made the connection. If she was going to restore the house to it's former glory without magic, she was going to need a mop, a bucket, some sort of scrubbing utensil and a lot of elbow grease.

Still, she was serious about that. It seemed only right, to honour the wizard who'd left a decrepit house but preserved eternally some great treasure under those pure white drapes. Only when the house was spick and span again would she feel worthy of seeing what was under them.

And it wasn't like she was doing anything else interesting that holiday, anyway.

-0-

And so Conny DeH could be found, from mid-morning to late afternoon each day at the House. In two goes, she'd hauled a carrier bag full of smuggled cleaning equipment and a record player with some of her favourite records. Along with muggle favorites from her mother (Wham! And Michael Jackson), she had several records of wizarding music, from bands like the Black Eyed Puffskeins and one of Conny's new favourites, an alternative band called The Department of Funk. The main singer looked a lot like Luke, which may have been a contributing factor.

While Elizabeth was despairing at what on earth could have happened to most everything in her cleaning cupboard, her daughter was busy scrubbing away at four years of muck and grime. She started with the hallway.

Three rounds of air gun pellets and seven dead doxies later, she had a hat with lots of holes in but a marginally safer house. The ancient Persian rug that spread over the hall floor was taken out and viciously beaten, relinquishing enough dust to kill a small child, before been scrubbed, vacuumed and laid back down. Conny replaced rotting planks of wood, nearly losing several fingers to poorly aimed hammer blows in the process. The walls were scrubbed and dusted, spiderwebs pummeled into submission, paintings cleaned until their frames almost glowed.

She then moved into the kitchen. The rats were living in the oven, as it turned out, and propping the door closed and turning it up solved that problem and filled the house with the disturbing but homely smell of crispy roast rat. Conny took to sneaking into nearby building sites of skips to find replacement tiles for the kitchen and bathroom floors, and took a crash course in grouting and cementing, creating a mish-mash floor that looked more like it belonged in a discothèque than a London suburb. The fridge was purged of its advancing rot by means of a sponge on a stick saturated with bleach and application of a nosepeg. Conny refused to go anywhere near that thing until she was sure that something inside wasn't going to reach out and grab her. You never knew with wizarding mould.

Meanwhile, she'd sent a letter.

_Dear Lucy,_

_I hope you're having a good holiday waitressing in Luton, and I hope you haven't done anything illegal to get better tips. Your present should be coming by post owl tomorrow._

_I have something to ask of you. I need a pane of window glass, measuring four feet by seven feet four inches, preferably enchanted with the spells wizards put on windows to stop stuff happening to them._

_If you could deliver it, along with two tall attractive wizard window-fitters, to the Inbetween House, Malachite Hill, Shepherd's Bush, London, I would really, really appreciate it and I promise not to wonder where you got it from._

_Have a great Christmas and a happy new year,_

_Conny_

If there was anyone she knew who'd be able to find a replacement window, it was Lucy Ra. With all her connections and brothers and pursuits of dubious legality, Conny was eighty-nine percent sure that she'd come through. She only hoped that Lucy was finding time between shifts as a waitress to do her holiday work, or she'd get in big trouble. Shrinking potions don't brew themselves, as they saying goes.

Of course, her parents noticed that something was up. David had to work right up until the evening of Christmas Eve and so wasn't present to note her absence, but Elizabeth, who taught at a muggle school nearby and so had school holidays off, perceived that her daughter seemed to be running off.

She confronted her about it before bed on the twenty-third. Thirteen could be a tricky age; Elizabeth remembered her older sister became a horror once she became a teenager. They'd had a small birthday celebration yesterday evening, in which Conny had received several books, a dragonhide collar for Bach, and a curious pot-plant that looked like a perfectly normal geranium until you put your fingers near it. It sprouted a vicious pair of fangs and nearly bit Conny's left index finger off. Trust her Great-grandmother Paula to think a fanged geranium an appropriate present for an adolescent witch who couldn't keep her limbs about her at the best of times.

Anyway, Elizabeth was just putting Conny to bed on the twenty-third when she decided to confront her before all the relatives arrived, just in case something was amiss.

"Conny," she started, in that tone of voice that means you intend to start a serious conversation, and sat on the end of her daughter's bed. Her bedspread was covered in a moving frieze of the night sky, upon which the stars really twinkled and the moon really emitted soft silver lambency. It was a smaller version of the enchantment that made the ceiling of the Great Hall at Hogwarts show the weather outside.

"What?" Conny yawned, bookmarking her copy of _Intermediate Transfiguration _and looking up at her mother.

"I just wanted to ask how you were." Elizabeth said gently. "You've not exactly been frequenting the house lately."

"I'm fine." She replied nonchalantly.

"Conny." Elizabeth admonished her. "I'm just concerned. What've you been up to?"

"Nothing."

"Conny." That tone again.

"It's really nothing, mum."

"Not drugs?"

"Not drugs."

"Not gangs? Please tell me you haven't joined a gang."

"I haven't joined a gang, mum." Conny raised her eyebrows. "And I'm not out with a boy, and I'm not smoking in the park, and I'm definitely not dealing stolen billywig eggs."

Elizabeth looked relieved, and tucked a lock of light hair behind her ear. "Well, thank God for that. If you're not doing any of that, then what the blazes are you doing?"

"Just… exploring. Finding parks to sit in and read. And benches. Lots of benches."

"Oh." Elizabeth nodded. "Well, I'm glad you're okay. It wouldn't hurt to check in with me at lunch, if you could. And the smell of bleach about your clothes could go, if I'm to be picky."

Conny reddened. Rats. "I'm sorry about that. Council came around bleaching the playground off Marlowe Avenue because of some problem with the new metal it's made out of."

"I did read something about that in the Parish magazine." Elizabeth mused. "Well, whatever it is you're doing, I want you to stay in the house tomorrow and Christmas and Boxing Day, to be with the family. And afterwards, you're to check in at lunchtime."

"Okay."

"Good." Liz gave her a hug. "Sleep well. Be ready for family by mid-morning; apparently your Uncle Terry threatened something about a big hug for the teenager."

"No! I actually broke a rib when he promised a big hug for the double-figures when I turned ten!"

"Your dad fixed it quickly enough." She reminded her.

"It was still uncomfortable! And Uncle Roger and Auntie Belinda kept trying to insist that they drive me to A&E in their car!"

"It is a wonder that my brother ever gained his driver's license." Elizabeth chuckled. "Anyway. Goodnight, Conny."

"Goodnight, mum."

Elizabeth turned the lights out and left. Conny laid in bed a long time, feeling terrible for lying so blithely to her family.

-0-

Christmas Eve was full of its usual childish magic; Conny got up earlier than usual and went downstairs to press her nose against her bedroom window, watching the street below. She had a rough idea of when people would start arriving, but it was always rather exciting when a car shot past or a figure rounded the corner. The tree was up and resplendent as usual in it's yuletide glory, draped in tinsel of every colour and pattern (including the zebra-print tinsel, which brayed nervously whenever one walked past it). Baubles weighed down the tree's mammoth branches; the traditional German spun glass clinked in the wind against red and green spheres and purple advent baubles, each with a tiny, real flame inside. Miniature lanterns full of flickering lights shone out a range of tones through their pigmented shutters. The legs to give that feeling of movement had forcefully strung up a few pixies.

Conny wasn't looking at that right now, though. She was looking at the man who was walking towards her door, and she was sure by his colouring that he was not one of her relatives.

He stopped and looked straight up at her. Dazzlingly handsome, his face reminded her of Lucy.

He wasn't Jahnen or Ali; she'd met them in Diagon Alley in August. Khai was in Azkaban. So this must be the fabled fourth and youngest brother, Alexi Ra.

He motioned for her to come outside and follow him towards Keats Street. She checked that her parents were occupied- Elizabeth perfecting the army of canapés to be served, David at work until the afternoon. She slipped out the front door and rounded the corner, finding herself face to face with Alexi.

"Lucy has sent me." He said slowly. She noticed that he was paler than the rest of the Ras she knew, but so much more attractive. He was impeccably dressed in a casual shirt and a thick navy blue woolen military jacket with silver buttons. She gulped, blushing. "About the window."

Oh! That. Conny let out a breath and tried to regain her composure. She remembered this feeling from somewhere, the intangible pull… "Okay."

"If you would show me where the residence is." He inclined his head faintly, one perfect, black eyebrow quirking ever so slightly.

She walked in silence and a little too fast to the House, which she had christened the Inbetween House, Malachite Hill. Alexi looked up at it. She fiddled with the lock on the front door. She'd routed around in her dad's DIY shed, which was sequestered in the garden behind (and was really an extension of) the Wendy house, and found an old set of locks and keys that they'd used for the house before the war. Of course locks had to be changed. Muggle looters and burglars may not have known there was a deadly wizarding war happening, but what they did know was that suddenly houses full of goodies were being abandoned.

She almost felt like she owned the Inbetween House now, even though she knew she was just keeping it nice until the wizard who had lived there returned. She entered and went into the crazily clean hallway and lit the lanterns that at the moment gave the place light.

Alexi lingered at the threshold, looking around. Conny blushed, having forgotten her manners again.

"Please, come in." He nodded his thanks and she led him up to the top room. He surveyed the window for a brief moment before taking out his wand, a jet-black baton of intermediate length, and pointing it at the shard remains and the battered frame.

"_Evanesco_." He intoned, and the frame and its associated debris vanished immediately. Conny, fascinated at the vanishing spell, watched his wand position. It was neither a forceful push away, like banishment, or a pull towards him, like a summoning. It had been a sharp upward wrist flick, followed by a soft raised out. She'd have to look that up.

"Where is the window?" She asked stupidly.

To her surprise, he smiled, causing a cauldron of swooshy feelings to stir inside her stomach. Out of the inside pocket of his coat, he pulled a small sphere, no larger than one of the baubles on Conny's tree or a small bludger. He held it out to her.

Quite sure that it wasn't a window, she gently picked the ball out of his hand and looked out it. It felt curiously light in her palm.

"You were not to know that it is practice by the most discerning on wizards not to enchant glass, but to have it spun."

"Spun?"

"May I explain?" Alexi asked. Conny nodded, noticing that his accent was very different to Lucy's, or those of her other brothers. It was refined, but forced, with a hint of something European, perhaps German, to it. "Open the sphere."

"But it has no opening." Conny argued, perusing it thoughtfully.

"You are a witch, are you not?" He asked.

"I'm not allowed to use magic out of school."

He sighed and placed his forefinger on the sphere. Where it touched, a thin line scored itself like an equator around it. "There."

Conny got her fingernails in the crack and prized the sphere open.

"Merlin!" She shrieked, dropping it and scuttling away. Inside was a spider.

A spider made out of pure crystal.

"Girls…" Alexi muttered, picking it back up. "A Glass Spider spins windows not only indestructible but protected beyond even the most powerful enchantments. Lucy wanted only the best for you."

And Alexi, like the rest of her brothers, attended to Lucy's every whim, to the letter, Conny thought. The spider was the size of a small tarantula, but it's whole body appeared to sparkle like cut crystal. It looked out with eight eyes, dark and murky obsidians, waiting. Alexi placed his wand on its head. "_Spithra._"

The Glass Spider jumped onto his hand and looked around. It saw the empty window-sized gap in the wall and spun a ladder down from Alexi's hand to the floor, quickly scuttling over and climbing its way to the space. It shot out its magical threads and began to, impossibly quickly, create a shimmering web spanning the breadth and height of the frame.

"Give it until Boxing Day and you will have a window to the soul." Alexi said quietly. "Listen carefully. Once the Glass Spider has finished, it will find it's way into the darkest corner of this place. You must owl me immediately when this happens, or you will find yourself sole carer for a very angry, very deadly horde of Glass Spiderlings."

"It's deadly?"

"Oh yes." He glanced almost fondly at the glass spider. "Its venom will turn you to crystal from the inside out."

"Slowly?"

"Agonisingly." He smiled. "I will leave now. And I remind you, whom my little sister seems to so greatly value, that if you ever hurt her you will have me to answer to."

"Y-yes, sir."

"And I assure you, I will not give you time to answer before you find a worse fate than turning to glass."

He nodded once, surveyed her critically, but seemed to pause. Conny shivered, finding herself rooted to the spot by his gaze. Her heart was hammering in her chest. He seemed so close, so frightening, and yet…

"Goodbye." He seemed to draw darkness around himself before apparating away with a muted crack more like the low strum of a lute and a great plume of black smoke. Conny wafted it away, coughing, but stopped. It smelled like him. How curious… a heady mixture of faint cologne, leather and old wool.

She was left wondering why Lucy didn't talk about Alexi at all. Was he some sort of pariah, even within the bizarre Ra syndicate? He was so… so amazing. Handsome, suave, mysterious…

She wondered if Khai was like that too.

Shaking thoughts of the Ra brothers out of her head but finding it difficult to rid her mind of Alexi, she stared at the frenzied Glass Spider. It was beautiful and deadly. Sort of like Alexi himself…

_I cannot fancy Lucy's brother! _She admonished herself, mortified.That would not go down well with her best friend. Especially since Alexi must be in his early twenties and she was only thirteen.

Thirteen! Conny smiled to herself, hurrying home from the Inbetween House. A teenager. In the muggle world, it meant more, but she was still getting older! It was exciting, even if her presents had been quite small. She didn't mind; she'd get some good ones for Christmas anyway, and she ha everything she wanted already. Bach, who she loved dearly, her carom boots, which she needed to make more use of. Sneaking out after lights out was an activity she had all but given up last term, so tired she was with all the extra Transfiguration. She resolved to find some more secret passages and listen to more prefect/teacher gossip. And there were certain doors that only opened at midnight anyway.

She just hoped she wouldn't lose her way and end up by that archway again…

Conny got home and immediately flushed all those thoughts out of her head. She'd only been with Alexi about half an hour, and it looked as though she might have gotten away with it. She quietly closed the front door and was about to sneak up to her room when-

"CONYERI!" She flinched and faltered. Her mother only ever used her full name when she was in big, big trouble.

"Yes?"

"WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? I EXPRESSIVELY ASKED YOU TO STAY IN THE HOUSE!"

"Er- I've just… I mean, I was only-"

"You are in big trouble!" Elizabeth took her by the ear and thrust her down into a chair opposite her own on the kitchen table. "The guests are just about to arrive and you just saunter off! Your dad is having to work until the afternoon and I'm so busy getting dinner ready that there is nobody to host! How rude it would be of me to ignore one of my family, or one of David's!"

"I'm sorry! I was only-"

"You've been absent through this whole holiday, Conyeri. You're out all day and spend all evening doing work in your room. David and me hardly see you. I know you're a teenager now, but it doesn't give you an excuse to be antisocial. We don't see you at all during term-time… why wizards only have one school, and a boarding school in Scotland at that… well, it still stands. I want you in this house or garden from now on until I say so, or you'll be grounded until you go back to school!"

Conny nodded sheepishly, her stomach sinking. What if… what if she couldn't go check on the Glass Spider on Boxing Day? What if it got angry and Alexi didn't get rid of it and it hunted her down and turned her to crystal from the inside out? That would probably be worse than her mum's punishment for sneaking out…

She could just owl Alexi (via Lucy, she supposed, since he hadn't left an address) on Boxing Day anyway. But what if it's hadn't finished by then? He'd be really angry and he wasn't the sort of person she thought it was okay to get on the bad side of. So Conny could sneak out and check, but what if her mum got her dad to put a childproof charm on the front door so she couldn't physically leave? That would suck verily.

Something started overboiling on the hob and Elizabeth flew into a cooking-induced panic, leaving Conny sitting, cowed, at the table. She noticed that the cutlery, possibly in Elizabeth's haste to get everything done, had been laid wrongly around the dining room table so she quickly corrected it before running to her room to change into something nice. Sucking up to get her mum to get her to let Conny go on Boxing Day was a must.

Due to the staunch traditionalism of some muggle relatives (girls must be in dresses! Why, back in my day, trousers were banned and Germany bombed everything and bread only cost a penny!), and the rather liberal leanings of her wizarding family (we're an integrated generation, man, kids can wear robes, dresses, whatever they like!) she decided to, obviously wear a dress. A lot of her dresses seemed overly childish now she looked at them, especially the one bought by Auntie Belinda and Uncle Roger, and, judging by its floral print and Peter Pan collar, Cousin John too.

As a teenager, she should look sophisticated, shouldn't she? She'd never thought about it before. At school she mostly wore uniform, or jeans and pullovers in various combinations on the weekends. Lucy was much more fashionable, with tunic dresses and mini-skirts.

Conny was desperately trying on a pale blue dress when she realized why things were looking so odd on her. It was the sudden and inexplicable addition to her chest of breasts.

"Holy Circe." She thought, pulling the dress off and examining the white vest she was wearing underneath. Indeed, there was… oh dear. Oh very dear. How could she not have noticed?

No, she remembered, there had been signs of this happening, but she'd been trying her best to ignore them. Shirts fitting a bit snugly, that sort of thing. She couldn't ask her mum about it now; she was apoplectic with cooking angst at the moment. Her dad would blush furiously and insist it was something she should ask her mum.

That meant… that meant she'd have to ask Florence and Charlotte. They were fraternal twins, daughters of her dad's oldest sister, who lived in Australia and did something very important but never visited. Her daughters, who went to university at WUM and WUL (the Wizarding Universities of Manchester and London respectively), visited in her stead, bringing the same presents from her Aunt every year. David got the same novel, _The Mysteries of Argentinean Waterfowl_, Elizabeth got scented soap, and everyone else got a galleon voucher for a very posh wizarding shop called Superlative Sorcerers' Styles. Conny had been there once and theorized that if every family member pooled every voucher they'd received every year since she was born, they'd have enough to buy a pair of socks from there. Maybe only a single sock.

Florie and Lottie, as they were known, were very loud, very clumsy, and very… young. They did things like sneak into concerts and get very drunk and have 'liaisons with' (whatever that meant) various boys they met. Apparently, according to Boris Malasten (who'd been a first-year when they'd gone to Hogwarts) they were moonsheigh smokers too. Well, Conny didn't put much stock in what Boris said, because he wasn't one to talk anyway. Still, they were great fun and liked to spoil her silly. If anyone knew about buying bras, it was them.

In the meanwhile she donned a cardigan and hoped nobody would notice.

The doorbell rang at two o'clock precisely. Conny, who'd been putting a dustsheet down by the fireplace for those who arrived by floo, rushed to get it. She welcomed in Uncle Peter, a man in his sixties (her mum had been a bit of a last-chance Charlie, so a lot of her muggle relations were old), turned up in his BMW (he was quite rich- something to do with oil), with his wife, Hettie, and their daughter, cousin Ethel, who had her three-year old son in her arms. She welcomed them in and served them canapés and wine, which were taken after assurance that they were not cannibalistic, as in the past. Just as Ethel's son was garbling the word 'cheese', much to the cooing of the assembled, someone who could only be Uncle Terry crashed through the upstairs bathroom window on a broomstick. Conny excused herself and lugged his body out of the rubble. Astonishingly, his ancient broom, which was more like a floating log, had survived again. She plastered the bloodied cut on his forehead, served him two double firewhiskeys to 'get me on my feet again, Conny', and he was soon enough dusted off and talking animatedly to the others in the living room. Roger and Belinda, also muggles but less well-off, arrived in their battered ford with their son John and his girlfriend Katie in tow, followed by Great-Grandmother Paula (who was, as a witch, much older than everybody else but still as vigorous, and apparated everywhere because she was too lazy to walk), who gave her several slobbery kisses before dumping her heavy coat and frightful albatross-feather hat with Conny to find somewhere to put them. She gingerly approached the hatstand, temperamental as it was, but after a bit of coaxing and a bottle of wood polish it agreed to take Paula's things.

Uncle Graham brought his nineteen-year-old son Joshua, whose spots had cleared up and was now quite handsome (not that her witch cousin Caroline seemed to reciprocate the crush he had on her), and also her muggle grandma, Pat, who had been on a Caribbean Saga cruise this time last year.

"Your great-uncle Dylan sends his best regards and reminds you that you're all freaks." She smiled, causing a rumble of laughter. Nobody much liked Great-Uncle Dylan anyway.

Finally, closer to dinner than not, Florence and Charlotte stumbled, ashen, from the fireplace, carrying with them more presents than they could manage.

"Florie won the Daily Prophet Prize Draw." Lottie explained gleefully. "So we've bought you all everything we were too tight to buy you last year."

"Here, here!" Terry clasped them around the shoulders. "How're my favourite nieces, then?"

"Most excellent, thanks Ter." They replied. "Mum sends her love."

"Really?"

"No, she hates the lot of us, but I was being nice."

"Tch." Terry chuckled. "Oi, Conny, come help us put these under the tree!"

"Okay." She took an armful of oddly shaped presents and they tottered into the back garden to place the presents under the tree. By now, it looked as though Father Christmas had been subcontracting his work out, because heaps and heaps of wrapped packages ringed the tree, more than Conny had seen in previous years, probably to do with Florie's windfall.

"Wow." Terry rubbed his hands together. "Quite the haul."

"Now, now, Uncle T." Florie sighed, waggling her finger at him. "Christmas isn't about the presents."

"No." Lottie agreed. "It's about the drinking!"

"Here, here!" firewhiskey was summoned from nowhere and they all drank to what they somewhat spuriously called 'health'.

She'd best move in before they got smashed. "Florie, Lottie, can I talk to you?"

"Sure you can, honey." Lottie tousled her hair affectionately. "What's up?"

"Uncle Terry, can you go tell my mum that everyone's here and she can do dinner now?"

Terry recognized that he was being gotten rid of and bounced off cheerfully. Florie and Lottie closed in. "What is it?"

Conny reddened. "Well, um, I was trying to decided what to wear for today and I realized nothing fitted well because… um… I need…"

"Yes?"

"What?"

She lowered her voice to a whisper. "I need a _bra_."

"A bra?"

"Shh- not so loud!"

Lottie and Florie giggled themselves silly. "Hey! It's no laughing matter!"

"Of course it's –hah – not!" Florie recovered, wiping her eyes. "Oh, Conny, you're so sweet! Thirteen and you're too shy to go bra shopping! I just want to give you the biggest cuddle-"

Conny was hugged voraciously from behind. "C-can't… br-breathe-"

"Whoops." Florie let her go. "Well, you've come to the right girls, little Conster."

"Conster?" Lottie asked.

"Like Monster, but Conny, see? Roll with it, Lott."

"Okay."

"Right." Florie sized her up. "I tell you what, Miss Finally a Teenager, after dinner, with your mother's permission, we're going to take you out and go clothes shopping."

"With your Christmas money." Lottie added.

"I haven't got any yet."

"Don't worry about that." Florie winked.

"Oh, but, my mum won't let me out."

"Why? Auntie Liz is always cool with that."

Conny reddened again and sighed. "Well, I've sort of been sneaking out of the house and she caught me, so she says I'm grounded to the house and garden until she says I can leave."

They took her by the shoulder. "Conny, the key to sneaking out-"

"-Is not to get caught, dear."

"And don't worry about it. Me and Flor have a few tricks up our very fashionable sleeves."

"We do?" Florie asked.

"Oh yes." Lottie affirmed. They took Conny under the arms and carted her back into the house, where Elizabeth had drafted in Joshua and, much to his delight and her disgust, Caroline, to help serve dinner. They were hefting a huge lasagna onto the magically elongated dinner table, sweating with the effort.

"No, up, you pillock!" Caroline snapped.

"Sorry." Joshua groaned, maneuvering the lasagna with difficulty. "I'm taking all the weight."

"Like sod you are, pansy." She hissed. "I _will_ hex you again."

They argued like a bickering couple as Florie and Lottie approached Elizabeth.

"Hey, Auntie Liz!" They chorused, giving her hugs. "Need anything taken in?"

"Oh, thank goodness. If you two could take the green beans and the wines in, that would be great."

"Sure thing." They smiled, and with a flick of their wands, everything that had previously required heavy lifting floated easily across the hall and into the dining room, to rest perfectly on the table. They weren't at university for anything.

"Auntie Liz."

"We have something to ask."

Liz looked up from the spectacular gateau she was placing tiny chocolate Christmas trees on.

"Conny here needs our help. And quickly."

"Yes, it must be seen to at once."

"What is it, you two?"

"She needs to go bra shopping." Florie said bluntly. "And you were so busy that she didn't want to bother you. Could we take her quickly to the Christmas Eve sales at Drastick Alley?"

"We promise we'll side-along apparate there and back and she'll be home for ten."

"Eleven." Lottie amended quickly.

"Ten-thirty." Elizabeth corrected. "With what money?"

"Christmas money. From us. Florie won the wizard lottery."

"Congratulations." Liz looked at Conny, who blushed. "You could have told me, Conny."

"You were so busy with preparing and mad at me…"

Liz sighed at the sound of something being knocked over. "If you're not back in ten minutes, David, I'm going to feed you to the fanged geranium that your brother got our daughter!

"So we can go?"

"Yes, but _please_ be careful. Conny doesn't get into much trouble usually, but there's always a time to start…"

Conny very nearly scoffed at the gross understatement.

"Of course." Florie said.

"She's safer than wood with us."

"Safer than wood?"

"No idea." They shrugged to each other.

"After dinner." Liz directed them to the table with a strict look on her face. Conny sat down between Florie and Lottie, which was a dangerous place to be at the best of times. The assembled DeHayersaes, Thannals, Dallerys and Smiths were joined happily, chatting, complimenting the lasagna, drinking, discussing their years, drinking, joking, or drinking. Just as pudding was about to be served, David and his best friend Ewan Liramy appeared, slightly drunk, holding bags that were, they vehemently repeated, _not_ full of last minute present shopping.

"…The last time he went against his party, it was voting troops out of the Crimea!"

"This warlock walks into a pub…"

"Mummy, why is the ice-cream _looking_ at me?"

"Ignore it sweetie, it's just Uncle Terry being silly again…"

Conny smiled beside herself at the assembled family. She loved how they could live together, wizard and muggle, no friction or hostility. She'd heard Professor Binns droning on about the reasons why wizards kept themselves secret from muggles: muggles would want all their work done by spell… and muggles had a propensity for hunting down and killing anything that scared the or usurped their sense of rulership over the earth. Witches, Catholics, the like, even though most witches (real witches, not old muggle herbalist women with cats) would just perform a flame freezing charm and pretend to die until the crowd disappeared.

Still, Conny knew that not all muggles were like her relatives, and unfortunately their Christmas arrangement would have to stay as it was. For the muggles, it was a chance to see some amazing things and hang out with the (slightly weird) extended family. For the wizards, it was perhaps a chance to break the Statue of Secrecy (which everyone really, really wants to do at some point) without any retribution.

The ice cream and gateau was finished and the night's festivities began in earnest. The living room had been further enlarged, even further than the planning permission actually cited for, and three additional sofas had appeared. The children were deeply involved in a game of Twister that looked frankly quite dangerous, while Uncle Terry had unearthed their scrabble board from the games cupboard by the television and was challenging anyone for five galleons a game. Conny suspected that her muggle Grandma Pat, three times English over-60 Scrabble champion, was going to clean him out, though Terry kept conjuring extra tiles while she was distracted by sherry and had, impossibly, won 74 points with 'verisimilitude'.

"Well hello there." The twins pounced on her.

Lottie grinned, hiccoughing slightly and placing a tumbler of Irish Cream Liqueur on the head of a passing child. "Are you ready?"

"Let me just-"

"That was a yes." Florie grabbed her arm tightly. "Now, you'll feel a slight pinch."

"More like a vomiting sensation."

"Well, really like being turned inside out."

Conny snorted. "I've side-along apparated before."

"Okay then, miss Done-it-all." With a lurch, the three of them disappeared from 92 Poet's Place in a copious cloud of tin-coloured smoke, prompting one elderly muggle relative to ask where the fire was.


	12. Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven: Shopping

They reappeared within a second on Oxford Street, just out of view in the alley between a toy store and a designer clothing outlet. Conny tottered and nearly threw up. God, she hoped apparating for real was better than doing it side-along, because it absolutely horrible. The last time she'd apparated, it had been clinging to the back of a Death Eater disguised as Professor Snape, the greasy young potions master. Then Avery had tortured her before failing to kill her. Fun times.

"You okay, Conster?"

"Gimme a minute." She caught her breath against the wall and felt the ugly, Hammersmith & City line shaped scar across her back twinge angrily at the recollection. Even though he'd been possessed at the time, if she ever met Douglas Ohsem again, she'd give him a slap. That thought comforted her and she dusted herself off before allowing Florie and Lottie to lead her out onto Oxford Street.

"We're shopping for muggle clothes?" She asked stupidly.

"Oh, no." They smiled. "Well, you're a little young, but wizarding London contains several shopping districts. Diagon Alley, for all your wizarding needs, Knockturn Alley, for those less… salubrious purchases, are the main ones. But there's where we're going, Drastick Alley, which is newer, and sorta hip, for young witches and wizards. Natchur Alley for the hippies-"

"-It's more of a camp, really-"

"Right next to Lirric Alley, where all the pubs and bars and concert halls are."

"So really, there are many more places than just good old Diagon Alley to go."

"Wow." Conny hadn't known that there were so many places to do your magical shopping. "And we're going to… Drastick Alley?"

"Yep." They passed the huge, bright storefronts of Oxford Street, which was curiously for Christmas Eve, chock-full of shoppers. The twins led her through the throng, right up to the imposing entrance to Selfridge's. They slipped inside and through the muggle paraphernalia to the very back, where they took the lift to the top floor. There, they exited and, next to the lift they'd come up in, was another. A large sign on it said: DANGER, LIFT OUT OF ORDER.

Florie pressed the button beside it anyway, and with a small pop, like the cork being taken out of a bottle of champagne, the doors opened just enough to let them in. The lift itself was very different to the one they'd come up in, and was obviously furnished by wizards. It had no buttons, but a thin hole for one's wand to enter, presumably to ensure that only wizards could actually access Drastick Alley. Lottie poked her maple-wood baton through, and a voice waxed into life from an ornate brass speaker on the corner.

"Welcome to the Oxford Street to Drastick Alley service. Please ensure that all your personal effects and familiars are stowed about your person before your journey commences. On behalf of the Ministry of Magic, we would like to remind you that shoplifters will be brutally dismembered. Thank you for your custom today."

"What does it mean by _service_?" Conny asked fatefully, before something began o click. Florie and Lottie took hold of one of the straps hanging from the ceiling, but Conny couldn't reach. They smiled at her knowingly.

The lift proceeded to plummet downwards.

Conny shouted a very rude word unbecoming of her age and grasped at something to hold onto, finding a bar and clinging to it for dear lift as the life dropped downwards at an alarming speed. She tried lamely to hold her dress down so as not to reveal to the twins her knickers, but they were too busy falling about giggling at the sight of her.

"It's not f-funny!" She huffed, reddening. "This thing is a death trap!"

"You'll notice that none of us are dead, though?" Lottie grinned as the lift came to a jerky stop somewhere below ground level.

Conny let out a breath. "Thank Circe that's ove-"

The lift then roughly jerked to one side, speeding along some sort of track. Florie frowned. "You didn't think that we'd have a fashion district underground? That's so passé, darling."

"But then where are we going?"

"Calm your pants, Conster, you'll see."

"Don't call me that!"

"Tch. Touchy little Conster. As I recall, it was you who asked us for help."

"I asked you for help because I thought you'd be sensitive?"

"Us? Sensitive?" They chuckled. "You were way out on that one."

Conny huffed and held onto the bar for dear life as the little lift seemed to jerk all over London. She spotted on numerous occasions tube stations, and they once had to come to a screeching halt to allow the 7:44 to Heathrow Airport to pass. After about ten minutes of this terror, the life finally stopped, rose to ground level again, and opened with a ping.

Drastick Alley was nothing like its counterpart that Conny knew. Instead of rickety, faded shopfronts and the looming silver of Gringotts' bank, Drastick Alley was totally circular, and to what Conny could see, made entirely of glass.

There was a central plaza, full of lifts coming and leaving, lined with benches upon which sat fashionable witches with bags of shopping or discerning wizards chatting about the newest waistcoat in stock or the like. The first ring of shops displayed their goods as best they could, with designer robes and shoes and bags vying for place against inscribed cauldrons and pure silver scales that claimed to be able to weigh your potion ingredients to the nearest nanogram. Amongst the couture and the high-quality goods were large shops for chain stores, like Wizardwear, Animagus Clothing (wear your wild side!), Void, World Wizard Design, the whole lot. The shops were all arranged in interlocking co-centric rings, like a giant, one-floor department store. Conny looked up to see the same London sky she'd been under earlier. It certainly felt like real weather, like she was outdoors, but how could it? How could muggles not notice the several hundred feet square area covered in glowing shops? How did aeroplanes not see it?

"Drastick Alley."

"Not much of an Alley, though, is it?"

"No, you're quite right, but what's in a name?" Florie lit a silver pipe and looked thoughtfully around, thinking of where to go. "What about Void? That's always a good place to start."

A cloud of shimmering white smoke from her pipe turned itself into an arrow and pointed towards the Void storefront.

"What do you mean by start at Void? I just wanted one-"

"Conyeri." They warned her. "As you are edging closer to becoming a woman, there are some things you should know."

"Yes." Lottie began, "First, the rule that you never shop for one thing. If one is going to shop, one _shops_, savvy?"

"Was that emphasis by italicizing, Lot?"

"That is was, Flo." They high-fived. "Now, you also need to know that when you get a bra, your entire wardrobe has to change. And judging by… well, by the look of you, most of your old clothes will stop fitting pretty soon. Not jerseys and jeans and that, but t-shirts, dresses, shirts, the like all need to be bought with the thought to accommodate the expansion of your chest."

"Exactly. So in addition to the brassiere itself, there are many other garments that require purchase."

"And you'll need new school shirts too."

"But that can probably wait until next year."

"Because by next year you'll have these humungous-"

"Shh!" Flo elbowed her sister as they reached the door to Void. "Right, you take the left, I'll take the right, rendezvous at the fitting rooms in five."

"What about me-"

Conny was again left by herself on the threshold of the shop, looking stupid. The clerk eyed her with small pity, but rubbed his hands together at the prospect of a big sale. Dratted commission. She nervously looked around, seeing only occasionally out of the corner of her eyes the frantic, fleeting silhouette of Florie or Lottie zipping between denim and lingerie. At one point, a tape measure zoomed at her out of nowhere and measured around her chest, taking great pains to annoy her as much as possible, before zooming back to one of the twins, no doubt with all of her measurements. The Void store was very large, taking up a whole quarter of the first circle to itself, and thus by the time Conny found her way to the fitting rooms, it was only seconds before she was accosted with two very animated, tottering piles of clothing that she assumed must be the twins.

The clerk was just about to ask them how many items they were taking in and that madam you can't have your pipe in here, but they barreled past him with little ceremony and took over most of one corner.

"Cheeky sod called me madam!" Florie complained. Lottie meanwhile was fiddling about with her wand and created a sort of barrier around their little area, through which nobody could see, hear or pass.

Seeing Conny's gaze, she explained. "We were at school during the war. They taught us all the protective enchantments like this- might as well put them to some use."

Conny thought that was really neat, to be able to effectively hide yourself from anything or anyone. Would come in useful next she found herself pitted against a Death Eater.

"Now, go in the little booth, take everything off except your pants and put _this_ on." Florie instructed her, blowing marshmallow-smelling pipe smoke at the barrier, where it flinched and prodded, wondering why it couldn't get out. _This _turned out to be a white t-shirt bra, size 32B. Conny looked at it, grimacing. "Honey, this is the plainest one. And we're not even on the matching stuff yet."

"_Matching_?"

"Just joking. And don't worry about coming back out, me and Lot have seen worse than you in your underwear. We're all girls here."

"The clerk-"

"Can't see you through the barrier. Go. Now."

Conny begrudgingly slipped her cardigan and too-small dress off and tried to get the bra on, but couldn't quite find the little loops at the back. "How do you do it up?"

Lottie showed her the technique. That special technique that all girls use to get bras on without having anyone to help. It was like enlightenment.

"Aww, you're so sweet." Florie cooed. "Now… get dressed."

So Conny DeH found out in the most stressful way what the twins' definition of shopping really was. She was literally snowed under clothing. A hundred different items to try on in a billion different combinations: dresses, t-shirts, shirts, skirts, trousers, something called a ra-ra skirt, all-in-ones that were most definitely not Conny's style. She found out that you had to co-ordinate your socks with your pants and your bra with your trousers, what the names of all the different types of necklines and cuts of tops were, and then what perfumes went well with what colour. Apparently you also had to do your hair in harmony with your trousers.

"This is great and everything, but I don't think people in my year worry too much about fashion. Most everyone wears trousers and jumpers."

"Ah! Here you're mistaken. You're in your second year now, but soon enough what you were will start becoming important. Here, we have planned out your wardrobe for the next three years. We've taken some risks, such as hoping that flares remain in fashion, but we've also been safe."

"And at least now, you know that you can't get really fat since you won't fit into any of it."

"Gee, thanks." Conny rolled her eyes. She really liked some of the clothes that Florie and Lottie chose for her- an awesome cut-off dark green jacket that went with a white scarf (she thought it made her look like on of the old muggle aviators in the World Wars). As for shoes, she scoffed at anything with at heel but did like boots, though they told her to wait until she was about fifteen to invest in a really expensive pair, because her feet would keep growing until then. All in all, she was very satisfied, though rankled at the cost that flashed up on the ancient till.

"That much?" She gasped. "No way, I'll put some back, you couldn't possibly-"

"Shuttup, Conster." Florie scooped a criminal handful of galleons out of her purse. "It's for your birthday and Christmas for the next hundred years."

"When I'm a hundred and thirteen, I'll hold you to that." She smiled and could not stop thanking them as, with the bulk of the shopping done, they started ambling around Drastic Alley, peering into shop windows.

"I love those robes." Lottie cooed at a figure-hugging magenta number cut so as to fall more like a dress than robes. "I just wish that uni didn't demand we wear course robes."

"Course robes?"

"Yep. At university- I go to WU-London – each course has different robes. Healers in training wear lime green, accountants have grey, and the like."

"What are yours?"

"I study Wizarding History, so mine are sea-green."

"What about you, Florie?"

"WU-Manchester doesn't bother." She shrugged. "I wear what I like."

"What do you study?"

"Experimental Spellwork and Enchantment." She went all flowery. "It's amazing. When I graduate next year I've got this work placement on this research project into a preliminary school of magic combining aspects from-"

"You're boring her, Flo, look, she's gone glassy-eyed…"

"No! It's really interesting! I didn't know you did that!"

"Well, we don't really talk that often, Conster." Florie chuckled. "What do you want to know?"

Conny's brain exploded with questions. "How do you make a new spell? How do you map a new ethereal pathway? Do you have to determine new staford measures? How do you do that? How do you-"

"Whoa! Calm down there, tiger. What're you taking? You're a second-year, right?"

"Yes." Conny brushed that concern aside. "But I'm taking my O.W.L. early, I understand the stuff, please explain-"

Lottie sulked. "This was just a shopping spree, now the brainiacs are turning it into a school trip… why don't I moan on about the Ghoul Detainment Act's repeal in 1744? Circe…"

"Oh, hush. She's just curious, and it's amazing that you're taking your O.W.L. early, Conny. Seriously. Transfiguration, I'm guessing by your questions?"

"Yes."

"Well," Florie began as they sat down in the plaza on one of the benches, which were curiously warm; on closer inspection, they were also made of glass and contained flickering multicoloured flames, "First you should understand that magic is not all governed by rules and constants."

"Okay." She'd realized this previously, and was itching to know how you could make new magic.

"Do you know the first law of thermodynamics?" Florie asked.

"Energy can be neither created nor destroyed."

"Correct. Now, knowing that, you can say that the energy in the world is always exactly the same. Now, when you heat something up, then put it in a room, the object itself cools and the room temperature increases. In other words, things return to equilibrium and energy- heat- spreads out. Now, energy and magic are synonymous for a wizard or witch. Deduct from this information."

Conny considered it. "That for a system at equilibrium, magic will be even spread out within that system."

Florie looked impressed. "Correct. So, you have this energy around you that you can only change, not create or destroy. Wizards take up energy from the air and convert it into magic. A wizard's base power to convert energy within himself is his ethereal signature. His ability to hold it and use it is his staford measure. This differs a bit for non-magical creatures and stuff, but that's the basic thing."

Conny waited for the next bit. Lottie, who was looking bored, announced that she was going to go get them hot chocolate from a stall on the opposite side of the plaza and would be back soon.

"So really, all you need is some way to manipulate magic, to direct energy to do what you want. Hence we have wands- to give magic resonance – and words, to convey what we want it to do."

"But it isn't as simple as just making up some Latin words and waving a wand, is it? I've been studying Haffet's Theory of trans-locative wand movement and-"

"Slow down there, Conny. It's great that you know so much about this, and that you have much a complex understanding of magical theory, but I want you to look at a base level at what magic really is. It's important. Magic is complicated, yes, but it's also so beautifully simple. You have to _feel_ it sometimes. It follows your logic, like moving your wand away from you to banish something, pulling it towards you to summon, but it also follows your soul. What you desire."

"I don't think I understand."

"You don't have to yet. It's a long learning process. Remember what you said about a system of magic at equilibrium earlier?"

"Yes."

"Well, I know this sounds crazy, but everything is an infinite number of magical systems at once. Your own body is a system, a single grain of sand is a magical system, as is an apple, or Coventry, or even the entire universe. We're all connected and magic shifts and changes with us. It's our second soul, as my professor says. You must have noticed that if you feel down, your spells seem sad, weak. When you're angry, your magic is volatile and prickly."

Lottie returned with three steaming wooden cups of cocoa. "You two done yet?"

"Nearly." Florie said, sipping and complaining. "Ow! Ith hot! I burnth my thongue!"

"You diplodocus, of course it is!"

"Sthuddup!" Florie quickly healed her tongue with her wand. "As I was saying. New magic isn't so much new as finding new ways to manipulate what is already there. Of course lots of equations and constants and endless bloody diagrams of wand movements in space- they're the tricky bit- but a simple, basic understanding of why magic happens is what is most necessary."

"So anyone can make new spells?" Conny corrected herself: "Anyone with a basic understanding like you said?"

"Well- yes," Florie looked suddenly uncomfortable, "But please don't try it. It goes so badly wrong. Experimental Spellworkers die all the time, or go mad or create a spell that makes their arm insubstantial and haven't figured out a counterspell yet… it's a dangerous business."

"But exciting."

"Correct. More exciting than History, at least." She ribbed her sister affectionately. "If Binns could see you now, Lot."

"He wouldn't; he was always blind as a bat."

They drank cocoa and laughed for a time before somewhere, a clock chimed. Conny had a sneaking suspicion it was Big Ben, and remembered the secret time-police Coteriate HQ that was hidden underneath, wondering what Killory was doing nowadays.

"That's ten o'clock, we must be getting back."

Conny eyed the lift with suspicion. "Why can't we just apparate?"

"Drastick Alley is a strictly no-apparation zone. For protection, see; if anything nasty wants to come harass shoppers here, they have to use the lifts or the lift tunnels, and there's plenty security to stop them before they arrive that way."

"Is it the same with Diagon Alley?"

"Since the war, yes. They relaxed it a little, but it would take a powerful wizard to apparate past the protection over that place."

"Like… You Know Who?"

Lottie shifted uncomfortably. "I would imagine so."

"Do you really think he's gone?"

That set the mood right down. Lottie frowned as she threw here cocoa cup into the air. It turned into a pigeon and flew away. "Well, I think he's been defeated. Maybe you can't kill him because he isn't even human anymore. I'm not sure and I don't want to think about it."

"I think he's alive." Florie said quietly. "As Lot said, he's not human enough to die, but he is still around, and he'll be back. Maybe not soon, but he will."

"You're predicting the redux of You-Know-Who on Christmas Eve, Flo? Morbid much?"

"Well, it's the truth, and Conny lived through the war too. We can't sugar-coat everything."

"True." Lottie sighed, and then brightened up. "Anyway, We need to get you home now. Don't want Auntie Liz to go all mugglezilla on your arse."

Oh yes, Conny thought, I can only pray she lets me out on Boxing Day to check on the deadly crystal spider from my friend's sexy criminal brother that is making a window for the abandoned creepy wizard house I've been sneaking out to renovate. That would sound _so_ bad.

They got into a lift and made sure all of Conny's new clothes were safe before Lottie poked her wand in the hole again and the voice appeared again.

"Thank you for choosing Drastick Alley for your wizarding shopping experience today. Please keep your receipts."

With that, the lift plummeted into the ground again, did its underground speeding thing and popped up nauseatingly on the top floor of Selfridge's. Conny allowed the twins to drag her out into Oxford Street and back into the alley, so ill was she now feeling. Wizards still hadn't quite grasped the idea that transport should be comfortable.

With the whip-crack sound and stomach-lurch feeling that always accompanied it, Conny was apparated on Florie's arm into her back garden. She really, really wanted to go to bed. They checked it with Elizabeth, who was gobsmacked by the sheer volume of purchases that had been made and went up to Conny's room. Bach had already claimed place on her bed.

"Well, it's been a genial day, cuz."

"See you tomorrow for presents!"

Conny smiled at the two of them. "Thank you, Florie, Lottie. You've been amazing. I still can't believe all these clothes."

"Ah, it's nothing." They blushed. "Now, you get some sleep, yes?"

"Okay."

"Night." They gave her one last hug and disappeared downstairs to join in at the height of the drinking.

Conny, utterly spent, just managed to climb into a brand-new pair of blue flannel pyjamas before falling asleep. Later on, Bach, roused from his slumber by Uncle Terry accidentally making something explode downstairs, prowled over to her and found his comfy position, on top of her face.


	13. Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve: Christmas Cryptic Crosswords

Christmas Day began, really, for the adult population, just as Christmas Eve ended at midnight, and with another glass of whiskey, thank you very much.

Conny woke up in the late hours of the morning, just as Bach, smelling the Christmas turkey, tried to claw his way to his feet using her face. Conny swatted him away lazily, groaning, and promptly fell out of bed with a great ker-thump! Onto the carpet, and forthwith decided that she didn't much rate exhausting shopping trips. Her legs ached from the walking, her arms from the bag-carrying and her stomach from the lift. Ugh.

She hauled herself to her feet using the furniture and dragged on some clothes, including, shock-horror, one of her new bras. Just by its virtue of existing, it seemed to make her breasts bigger. She sighed and unearthed from one of the plethora of Void shopping bags she'd come into ownership of an outfit that she thought was appropriate. A pair of white jeans and a fluffy dark purple quaffle-print knitted sweater would not look amiss today.

Conny followed Bach out of the room downstairs and giggled at the sight of tired-looking drunk relatives sitting in odd places, like the antique urn in the dining room or mumbling to each other. Once enough hair of the dog was passed out, they roused and joined the general movement of bodies to the garden.

They'd had a frost but no snow, much to Conny's disappointment, but the anticipation of presents made up for it. She didn't usually give presents to her extended family; her parents signed theirs 'From David, Liz & Conny' so she was covered there. She'd of course sent presents out to her friends: She'd made a mixtape cassette for Corfax, who was the most likely of her friends to know how to use a tape player, since he was muggleborn. To Lucy, she'd sent a hardback copy of _Quidditch Through the Ages_, and to Jon, a scarf she'd got her mum to knit that had multicoloured snails on it. She'd sent Rosie McAvery a gobstone she'd found down the drain in the sink at the Inbetween House (after cleaning it thoroughly) that she was pretty sure contained liquid silver. To Rebecca Dannat, because Conny liked her a bit better than Polly and Anna, she'd owled a pack of bookmarks that never fell out, to Tilda Tirias, a large package of chocolate frogs as thanks for doing all that Astronomy homework for her last year. Gil Lockhart got an illustrated book of Arthurian Legends, which he was obsessed with at the moment. In a rare attempt at humour, she'd got Rissa Mothley a stress ball. Az got a new pair of quidditch goggles after complaining incessantly that his old ones showed everything four inches to the left of where it really was.

The returns on her expanding friendship network were that in addition to family gifts, she received them from her friends as well. Lucy sent her what quite disgustingly looked like some dish or another she'd cooked herself to re-heat, and Jon returned on the snail scarf gag by buying her a crate of toothpaste. Rosie got her a tartan waistcoat, Tilda and Edwin sent more chocolate. Fax had bought her a tiny statue of Rowena Ravenclaw that glowed red and shouted at you if you put homework off to the last minute.

Later that day, Rissa owled her opining that her attempt at irony had been 'somewhat amusing', and apologising for not having purchased a gift.

Over Christmas Dinner, Conny was discussing her present haul with Cousin Joshua (muggle), and trying in vain to explain how transfiguration worked. The costume crackers had been brought out again, and with cannon-fire-esque cracking sounds and great perfumed clouds of smoke in various shades, the table became a dubious pantomime mixture of characters. Conny was Captain Hook this year, Joshua a walrus. Florie and Lottie were tweedledum and tweedledee and though it was a hoot. Knights and damsels, cops and robbers, queens and knaves, even Uncle Terry as Pete Burns, all corners were represented. They noshed their way through two turkeys and several kilos of roast potatoes. Carrots, broccoli, peas and parsnips were consumed, pigs in blankets hotly contested over, and Brussels sprouts left lonely-looking in the corner. Conny though she saw a few of them sobbing.

Conny, very full, reluctantly dragged her present haul upstairs and sat on her bed, penning thank-you letters to everyone who'd sent her presents. She was heinously disorganized every other day of the godforsaken year, but when it came to a celebration she decided that paperwork was her prerogative. She lazily fed Beethoven and instructed him to carry her letters out, though he was having more fun dive-bombing rogue Brussels sprouts. Multitasking, she read a book she'd got (this time it was actually not anything work-related… shocker), _Rise and Fall_, which was about the war. Nothing like memoirs of murdered wizards to watching with the Queen's speech, eh?

She was tempted to go check on the glass spider. After all, it wasn't Boxing Day, but Christmas afternoon was as good as, wasn't it? Then again, if she got caught, her mum would hate her even more for leaving when all the company was around. Conny sighed and regarded Uncle Terry, hopelessly drunk, trying to explain the Quidditch league to a bored-looking but equally pissed muggle relative. Conny went and grabbed the paper.

_Investigation into wizard killed in muggle terrorist bombing_

_Second bombing today- Department for Magical Law Enforcement prevent any injuries_

_Muggle Prime Minister urges wizard community to pay muggle tax_

_Price of cauldrons up 14% since last year- precious metals expensive, say goblin experts_

_How to train your crup_

_Cryptic crossword- turn to page 28 (Now makes half as much sense!)_

She perused it for some time, frowning as she read about the Oxford Street bomb. That must have been while she and the twins were in Drastick Alley. She could have been caught in it- she'd been openly on Oxford Street just minutes before! Her stomach twinged uncomfortably. Muggles didn't know how dangerous they were…

The evening drew to a close before Conny even realized it, so intently had she been perusing the Daily Prophet. She had been stuck on the cryptic crossword for a while, and had just realized that four down (queen of the Indian silver's young) was 'Occamy', and lost in time. She realized that she had a duty to do, so hastily began wishing relatives goodbye, thanking them for presents, or escorting a slightly woozy Great-Granny Paula outside, where she proceeded to splinch her nose off three times before managing to apparate home. Florie and Lottie wished her well with a great big hug and told her not to get too many boyfriends with her new super-fashionable clothing. She endured their hugs and kisses and exchanges addresses with them (because this was the first year she'd really got to know the two better, and she wanted to keep in touch), before they poured floo powder into the DeH fire and promptly disappeared with joint cries of 'A good nightclub!'. David chuckled at them.

"The young will be young, ey?" He smiled and pushed his glasses back up his nose. "Had a good Christmas, Conny?"

"Yes, it's been great."

"Sorry I haven't been around…" He sighed, "I do feel guilty, but we've just been manic at the moment. All the dark stuff that is still in circulation, it's like we'll keep mopping up after the war forever."

Conny knew the feeling. David was talking about mopping up shipments of biting handbags or illegal substances; she was thinking more along the lines of Death Eaters.

"At least it's giving you a job." She pointed out.

"Aye! Can't complain about that." David chuckled again and stretched his arms out. "Well, I'd best get this tidied up. _Tersus!_"

With a flick of his wand, the house started to knit its way back together. Spillages evaporated from the carpet; wrapping paper was vapourised, cups flew to the dishwasher, surfaces regained their shine, food disappeared off plates that had held half-eaten mince pies and truffles. Conny ducked to narrowly avoid a decapitating Frisbee-style dinner plate that whizzed past from the living room. Sometimes magic was just awesome. Then again, it left Elizabeth with very little to do sometimes. Why spend an evening washing the kitchen or doing spring-cleaning if your husband could flick a little wooden stick and have it all done in a blink of the eye? Conny thought that it might cause tension, but also that it had held her parents together. The less time and effort that went into doing menial tasks, the more time they had to spend together.

She helped the tidy-up by running a hoover over the living room carpet: it was the only muggle appliance that seemed to do better than any spell. After that was done, she wiggled into her delightful new blue flannel pyjamas and wrapped herself up in the ratty old dressing gown that had once been her dad's winter robe. It was very cold; she suspected that David had turned the heating charm off to simulate some sort of seasonal Christmassy feeling. Her mum made crumpets and hot chocolate and they cuddled up as a family on the sofa to watch the Christmas specials on telly. Conny snuggled into her Dad's shoulder, feeling tired but happy. She couldn't imagine not having her parents to fall back on, to be there for her. What would Christmas be like without all the family?

That thought led her to think about how her friends were spending Christmas. Lucy, obviously, was in Luton turning tables, staying with a relation. Conny imagined her mouthing off to a rude customer and spraying table cleaner in his face, which made her smile. For all her faults, Conny also could hardly imagine life without the ups and downs of Lucy Ra. Then there was Jon, who had owled her enthusiastically all Christmas with a hoary-looking Eagle owl whose name she didn't know but seemed to make the flight across the Channel more than was healthy. He described, in a mixture of English and French when he got carried away, life at the Embassy. Conny enviously read his tales of bizarre foreign wizards who kept popping in and out of this parents office and house, along with an unhealthy amount of detail concerning the Emissary of the Norwegian Second Undersecretary for the Regulation of Inter-European Trading, or more accurately his fourteen-year-old daughter, who was living a house over and was apparently spectacularly beautiful. Conny waded through pages worth of Franglais prose concerning her deep sea-blue eyes that sparkled in the lights of Paris sunset to learn that he was doing fine and enjoying himself. Boys…

Her mind drifted far away from whatever show they were watching to imagining other Christmases around the world. She could imagine Corfax sitting awkwardly in the big old house his stepmother owned, savouring snatches of time with his hapless muggle father and sneaking snacks back to his room. In her mind, he'd picked the biggest room in the house and converted the bed into a tent-palace, with cushions and beanbags all over the floor, a really big telly, and old copies of the Daily Prophet stacked haphazardly in a corner. Fax loved doing the cryptic crossword. He'd probably have spent a few days with his best friend, Marian Aster, also a Hufflepuff second-year.

Rissa and Derek Mothley would be being ignored in their massive mansion with their blue-blood family. Perhaps they didn't celebrate Christmas- as a present, they got a disapproving nod from their father and a stiff hug from their mother, if they both weren't off working. Maybe Rissa had a lovely old frumpy nursemaid who'd raised her. Az would be flying every day through acres and acres of open, uninhabited land that his family owned in Cumbria. Conny imagined him coming in from a cold day's flying, nose an ears red and his mop of blonde hair blown about, into a warm, stone-flagged kitchen where his cook had some thick, creamy soup on the boil in a cauldron over the fire. It would have snowed up there… imagine the view from his window!

She was thinking about what Professor McGonagall's cottage in Hogsmeade when she drifted off into a dream about Gil Lockhart's father offering her a scholarship to study ping-pong at Durmstrang…

When their daughter started snoring loudly and muttering something about fouls, Liz and David shared a look and a chuckle. They turned the television off and David scooped Conny up in his arms (which was getting difficult now she was older), taking her up to her room and tucking her into bed.

Neither noticed the tiny glass spider in the very corner of her room.


	14. Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen: Facets of the Business

Lucy Ra let out a big breath and sighed, leaning against the counter. She'd only three customers in (sad-arses who were eating alone in a greasy little café in Luton on Christmas Day- tch), so she wasn't doing much. Mohammed was flipping burgers behind the counter and muttering darkly about overdrafts. Nobody else was working today, not even Creepy Sue who skittered rather than walked, or Hasam, who was a friend of a brother of a nephew's ex-girlfriend of Lucy's great-aunt, who was the reason she was here anyway.

Lucy didn't want to stay with Great-Aunt Fats (Fatima, but she was fat and Lucy had no qualms about calling people rude things to their face), but she couldn't face Christmas anywhere else. Last year with Conny had been one of her best ever, save the ones she'd had when she was very little, when her family were still together. She couldn't stay with Ali, because his girlfriend hated Lucy and they were in baby-mode at the moment, and had no time nor rooms for a twelve-year-old girl. She would rather suck troll toes than spend any amount of time with Jahnen, whose flat was a bloody mess, who smelled a bit like mildew and was constantly making her go on dates with the sons of drug barons and dark wizards. Khai was obviously out of the question.

But… Alexi.

Alexi was rarely in England. He did things for the family in other countries, and he wasn't exactly the social type. His base of operations (when he was in the UK) was the Ra household in Brixton. Lucy hadn't set foot their since… well, she wasn't going to live there.

So there really wasn't anywhere for Lucy to go, hence she'd begged Great-Aunt Fats for somewhere to stay, the deal finally signed when Lucy said she'd work at Fats's son's (Mohammed) café for half-wage. She could have stayed at school, but there was just nobody there. If Conny had stayed, she'd have gladly stayed too, and if Conny had asked her to stay at the DeH house for Christmas again… she'd have jumped. But she understood why Conny hadn't. They were on shaky ground and Conny needed space. She understood that. Maybe they'd stay the Easter holidays- more people did that, since it was easier to revise for summer exams when you were at school, and the weather was usually nicer. A big minus to staying in the castle when there were few pupils was that your statistical chance of encountering Professor Snape increased tenfold.

Owls from her friends were all that Lucy lived for. She worked all day in the café, taking meager tips and getting greasy hands serving crap food to weary muggles and wizards alike. Great-Aunt Fats made her work the busiest hours- breakfast, lunch, dinner and the midnight to three a.m. 'drunken people seeking food' shift, which as boring as hell. Inbetween, she read letters.

Conny sent her the most letters, tales of the DeHayersae Christmas, and then there was that weird one about needing a window. She'd set Alexi on that. From Polly and Anna she got almost constant correspondence, which was shallow but a link to a slightly more interesting world. Polly was skiing in France and falling deeply in love with her skiing instructor, Frederíc, and Anna was touring the Scottish lochs in a magically-outfitted caravan, which was engaging than tiredly serving the billionth order of chips that day. From Becca Dannat came definitely intriguing tales of adventures in America with her father, who was a Ministry bigwig, and from Jon, who sent stories from the American Wizarding Embassy in Paris. Everything was more interesting than Luton.

The bell on the door tinkled and Lucy snapped to attention, hoping that it would be a man or a teenaged boy. Those were easiest, because Lucy was very good at making her eyes all big and innocent and affecting a slightly cutesy voice and getting bigger tips.

It was Alexi.

"What're you doing here?" She asked, perplexed, as her dark and broody brother sat down in the corner and took out a menu. She checked her watch and realized that it was far too early for him to be up and around.

"I'll take a bacon sandwich." He replied cryptically, looking up at her.

"It's a bacon _butty_, Lex." She jotted it down anyway. "And what are you doing here?"

"You ask a lot of questions for a waitress." He said, raising his eyebrows. His eyes flickered to the three other customers and he conveyed the idea that he wanted to talk in private and about something that was probably not legal. Lucy sighed and went to slap the order on a spike next to Mohammed, who was busy chopping lank tomatoes up. He grunted, peered over at Lucy's hyper-tidy girly handwriting and reached around for some bacon to slap on the grill.

"After this order can I take a break?" She asked sweetly. "'S not like we're heaving."

"Na'am." He grunted in Arabic. "Butcha gotta be back for the afternoon rush."

"Yeh, sure thing." He ladled dripping bacon onto a buttered piece of bread and then finished the sandwich, passing her the plate. Lucy took it over to Alexi, knowing he wouldn't eat it but appreciating the gesture. He paid with a twenty-pound note and told her to keep the change, and when Lucy went behind the counter to the till to cash it in, she found it oddly cold for money she'd had in her hands. Very discreetly, she pulled her wand out of its sheath under her skirt and tapped the twenty note. Writing seared into life across it.

_You will be needed for the graveyard shift tonight._

Lucy's spirits dropped and she cashed the twenty, eyeing her brother sitting, staring at her from his table, bacon butty untouched. She printed out the receipt.

She came to take it to him.

"What're you doing in London?" Lucy asked, perplexed. Alexi wasn't home at the moment, he was meant to be in Denmark doing something. Beats her why he was here in the first place.

"Business." He replied, thanking her and standing up. In one fell swoop, he seemed to disappear out of the door, into the street and evaporate like dust particles. Lucy sighed at the uneaten bacon butty and helped herself to it and she chucked the plate in the sink and went out back to take her break. Two knobs from the kebab place next door were busy smoking and complaining about their silly muggle lives in the alley that ran parallel to the main street but 'out back' of all the shops there. Lucy ignored their racist and sexist jibes and slipped further into the lattice of side streets that so beautifully made up Luton. Once she was sure she was far enough away from anyone, she sank down next to a wheelie bin and groaned loudly. Why? Why her?

Lucy loved her brothers. Khai had raised her; he was as close to a father as she knew. Jahnen, while moody and untidy, was very cuddly on the inside. Though Ali was irritable and consumed by his girlfriend and baby-to-come, she had fond memories of him; of all of them. They loved her. Nobody understood that though the Ra brothers had reputations second to none for being thieves, arms dealers, crooks and major players in British and International trade in illicit substances, they were her family.

Alexi had always been different. The other Ra brothers were dark and mysterious and always chaotic evil, sure, but Alexi was a dark horse amongst dark horses. A gifted wizard, handsome young man and smooth talker; he was a natural for the business they involved themselves in.

Then he'd gone and done _that_.

Lucy snorted, remembering the varied reactions around the metaphoric Ra dinner table. She'd hated it. Cried and bawled and shirked away from him. She hadn't understood it. Naturally, Khai had absorbed it, nodded and set about using it to his advantage.

Still, it was life, and the defining characteristic of life is that it goes on no matter how nicely you ask it not to.

In addition to the ultra-crappy Christmas she'd been having, Alexi was under orders from Khai to have a sort of 'take your little sister to work' thing. Since Alexi's work was usually top secret, Lucy couldn't exactly side-along apparate with him to Russia and ooh and ahh at some newcular weapons, whatever they were. So he'd taken work to her, and at the very base of the Ra criminal empire was drugs.

Mohammed turned a blind eye as long as a cut went into the café's tills. Locals knew now that if you wanted something, you came to the Bury Park Café. Local wizards and muggles alike. The item you ordered corresponded with the stuff you wanted, as long as you were actually there after drugs and not just a passing person who fancied a cheeseburger. They were very easy to differentiate.

Lucy's morality wasn't exactly… well, she knew where money came from and what you had to do to get it, Ra-style, and she would not disappoint her brothers, especially Khai. Her protection came from her brothers, as did her money, her education, the clothes on her back and the engulfing freedom that left her at once fearlessly autonomous and totally reliant on others for a sense of identity. If Khai told Alexi to tell her to sell drugs… well, drugs were bad, Lucy knew that from the media. Seldom a day went by when the Daily Prophet didn't have an editorial on some poor sod who'd overdosed on Merlin's Shadow and gone insane. Then again, if you looked at it very logically (and, though Lucy didn't perhaps understand this at the time, a liberal amount of specious logic), people would always buy drugs, and if you sold them, it was really just supply and demand, right? At least, Lucy decided, the stuff Alexi sent her to see was pure (ish) and wouldn't turn you into a lamprey or anything like that.

She knew it was going to be a long evening. Christmas was always popular for celebrations. God knows what would happen at New Year's.

Lucy pulled her wand out and twirled it around in her hands. It was old but retained its smooth, sleek feel in her fingers. Inside there was a sphinx whisker, which her father had plucked himself as he adventured in Egypt. Hassan Bin Aslem, the barmy wandmaker that was a member of her parents' expedition team, had hewn it from a cypress tree along the river where they had camped that very night. Her father had immediately asked if he could have it for his daughter.

"But Yafeu, you have no daughter." Hassan had said, bewildered, carving, in tiny strokes, decorative script in his native tongue onto the handle of the wand he'd just made. "And a sphinx whisker is no petty prize."

Her father had shaken his head. "No, I'm sure of it. She will have this wand; it will choose her."

"We cannot be sure of the future." Hassam had reminded him, testing the wand for yield. There was a surprisingly amount and he frowned, running his fingers along its length and puzzling over its character. "And Yafeu… I pity you if you father a daughter who belongs to this wand."

"Come now. May I have it? The whisker is after all my prize."

"And the wand is of my making." Hassam had told him. "We cannot split a wand. There is not much else to be done with a sphinx whisker. It is most valuable and useful as a wand core."

"Then I owe you one." Yafeu had accepted the wand from the grumpy old Egyptian man and placed it carefully in a case, which clicked shut with silver fastenings.

Her dad had just known things like that sometimes. Lucy felt a conflicted pang as she struggled with the father who she'd loved and the one she had not. The desire to be back at Hogwarts, away from her brothers and her destiny, won over and she figured that work passed the time more effectively than sulking in an alley. She took one last look at her ill-fated wand and holstered it, taking the walk back to the café at a leisurely pace. The idiots were gone, leaving a sort of loneliness in their wake. Lucy got back inside, tied her apron back up tightly and grabbed her notepad. She reminded herself to get good grades so she never, ever had to do this for a living.

A drippy couple bustled in and took a table. They looked on the daggier side of muggle, all pseudo-teenage with big hair and bigger poofer jackets. Lucy was thankful, sometimes, that as a witch she could wear robes most of the time, and when she didn't because the law said you had to integrate with muggles, she was well-bred (well, that was arguable, but although Ali and Jahnen had appalling dress senses, Khai and Alexi had both dressed impeccably and imparted their dress sense upon her) enough to dress nicely. She preferred dresses and mini-skirts, whereas Conny was more of a shirt and jeans girl. Jon dressed in anything on his bedroom floor that didn't smell too badly that was usually rumpled and back-to-front or tucked into his pants. Jon was such a dork.

"Heya! Can I get you anything?" She asked sweetly. It was too early for the 'graveyard shift' yet, but still…

"I'll have a… hmm, babe, whattya want?" Daggy Muggle Man winked at Skanky Muggle Girlfriend in a way that suggested that despite it being nigh on four o'clock, they were here because they'd been told that you could get stuff. Lucy sighed. She had about four hours a day where she was actually serving food, then all night was devoted to dealing. She could imagine Professor Atremidus's welcome back from the holidays pow-wow: 'And what did you do during your holidays, Lucy?':- 'Well, Professor Snoreface, I spent the whole time selling illegal substances to stupid muggles and stupider wizards.'- 'Well, that certainly sounds fun! What about you, Derek…?'

"I'd like… hey, honey, what I got ta order to get some snow?"

"I can recommend our quarter-pounder."

"Well, we'll get one to share then, please."

"Coming right up." Lucy smiled sweetly and quickly went to fulfill their order. Since very few people actually _ate_ at the café after about seven, Mohammed didn't have a great deal to do. He mostly sat mumbling to himself, eyeing up the cooking knives or planning ways to murder his parents for inheritance. Lovely chap. Lucy filled two glasses of tap water and slipped a little plastic bag between the folds of a napkin. It was easy. They gave her the money, she handed the goods. She didn't have to touch it or prepare it or anything. It was just… being a proxy.


	15. Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen: He Ain't No Good Guy

Lucy Ra had worked up until one in the morning before she realized three things that were very, very terrible. The first was that she'd let Alexi sort out Conny's window problem. The second was that Alexi, being Alexi, would take it very literally that she asked him to do the best job possible, and that the best would be the very dangerous, very deadly, very many different words for bad, Glass Spider.

The third was that Conny would likely have no bloody idea what to do about it.

"Shit." She swore loudly, turning heads. Suddenly she was torn. Alexi was killing Conny with a magical creature she could neither control nor stop, but equally she had to finish the night shift. Friend or family. Blood or blood.

Alexi would be angry. In extension, Khai would be angry, and Lucy couldn't have Khai angry with her, not for her life. But then again… it was just one night of doing the lowest of the low of the Ra business. Mohammed could do it- no; he'd never do anything voluntarily. Lucy's brain went into overdrive. It was just so… so pre-programmed into her to baulk at the idea of disobeying a direct order from her brothers, especially when it concerned work. Her hands shook, an outwardly temperate representations of the furious shouting going on in her head. Conny. Conny was in danger. The Glass Spider would kill her. She'd die. Life would end. And not just any life, Conny's life, which was very, very important to Lucy, despite their differences.

Betrayal or death was how it stood, stark in her mind. She knew how to kill a glass spider. Alexi wouldn't help because he never did things unless he had to and she'd bet her left ear that he'd told her to mail and not given an address or been equally as cryptic.

Mind made up, Lucy pivoted on the heels of her trainers and bolted out of the café. She ran through the back alleys of Luton, looking for a fireplace. She rummaged in one of the pockets of her apron, remembering that she'd left a load of floo powder there. She managed to find numerous other powders before finally scraping a fifty-pence-piece sized mound of floo powder. Clutching it, she rounded a corner, hoping she'd come out into a more wizard area where they had fireplaces. Lucy could break into a house no prob.

Instead, she found Luton Crematorium.

"Good enough." She muttered, remembering that any fireplace could connect to another- it was just a case of establishing a route. Like the road system, with motorways being floo routes to the Leaky Cauldron or other big wizard locations, A-roads being wizard-to-wizard fireplaces, and B-roads little-used muggle fireplaces.

Using a crematorium to get to Conny's house would be like… cycling through a marsh to get from A to B. Still, it would work, right?

Lucy pushed the double doors open and, causing much consternation on the receptionist's part, skidded on her heels and turned into a room, at the end of which was a large metal door with lots of warning signs around it. A red light was on and the fragrant aroma of burning relative was faintly noticeable, so it must be one. Flames licked the inside.

"Sorry about this…" Lucy checked a name on the table, "Mr. Simmons, but it's a long, long story and you're rapidly getting crispier." With that, she pressed the unlock button, opened the door, thrust her floor powder inside and jumped headfirst into the brief explosion of emerald-green flames that were created.

With a lurch, Lucy felt her body being jerked every which way. A crematorium was definitely not a proper fireplace. She tried to steady herself, catch her bearings and head south-west-ish, but the floo network grabbed her and she was a ragdoll in its throes. Soot clouded her vision and blew up her nose and into her eyes. Fireplaces, other crematoria, bonfires, everything was all jumbled up and mixed around as she desperately tried to find a fireplace to leave from. She hadn't even shouted Conny's address. Stupid Lucy.

She managed to reach out and catch the edge of a mantelpiece in her sweaty fingers, and hauled her body out of the floo network, falling, coughing, onto a paisley carpet. She looked up to see an elderly couple taking tea and looking very shocked that a small, dirty girl had jumped out of their fireplace. Lucy cursed (the granny gasped) and looked around for floo powder. Rats. They were muggles. She made a desperate root around in her pockets, coming up with a handful of cocaine mixed with residual floo powder. She shrugged. It would do.

"Look, litter!" She shouted, pointing out the window. The two terrified muggle oldies peered out, giving her time to throw her tainted floo into the fire, shout '92 Poet's Place!" and jump into their roaring green fire again. Mr. and Mrs. Eccleston of The Old Meeting House, Peat Street, Warminster, didn't see a litterer, and were just wondering why a little dark girl had come from their fireplace when they looked back and she was gone.

"Irene, I think we're going mad." Gerald said gravely. "Did you just see a girl in the fireplace?"

Irene Eccleston decided to change to subject. "I'll go and put on some tea."

"Mmm. Good idea."

They never talked about it again.

Meanwhile, Lucy found herself explaining to a very confused dustbin collector why she'd just popped out of 82 Poet's Place's front door when they knew the owners were on holiday in Portugal. Lucy claiming to be their friends' daughter from down the road feeding their cats got her out, though later the dustbin men would realized that the Porters of 82 Poet's Place didn't have cats.

She slunk out and crossed the road to number 92. It was getting dark, and a couple of lights were on. She could see Conny's mum humming to herself as she drank tea and watched telly in the living room. Conny's dad was reading the paper, wearing wire-rimmed glasses. David DeH usually looked quite sexy for a dad, but Lucy thought he looked more like a teacher in glasses reading a paper and suddenly fancied him less.

No! She shook her head. Conny's dad wasn't the priority at the moment. Lucy snuck around the side of the house, scaled the wall using the guttering and hopped up onto the sill of Conny's upstairs room.

What she saw made her stomach curdle.

Panes of glass. Tiny crystals, long spun lines of web criss-crossing the room, thick strands hanging from the rafters down to the lamps and the bedposts. Conny was fast asleep, dusted in tiny diamonds, her chest rising and falling with shallow breaths under her duvet, which was bright purple and had moving embroidery of penguins waddling about. This seemed to be a specialty of David's, since Lucy had been given a similar one that showed people she didn't like being fed to the giant squid.

"Shit." Lucy breathed, her eyes drawn to a fat, pregnant glass spider sitting pretty at the centre of its lair, dangling a metre or so above Conny's snoozing face. Its egg sac, a perfect and oddly viscous crystal, was wriggling nearby. "Double shit."

What did she do? Lucy couldn't use magic. Oh gods. Holy Merlin. Circe, Circe, Ptolemy's Knickers… Rage welled up. Trust Alexi. No, that wasn't true. Trust Khai to order Alexi to do it.

Because real friends are just a distraction.

"I'm so stupid." Lucy growled, hitting the double-glazed window with her fist, causing the egg sac to sway precariously. How could she have ever been stupid enough to ask her brothers for help with a friend they didn't approve of? Just telling Conny to lay off wasn't Khai's modus operandi. No, he'd kill her. In style. And what could be any more stylish than turning a thirteen-year-old girl to glass?

She hooked her fingers under the window and tugged upwards. It stuck fast. Lucy cursed violently in Arabic and pulled out a thin strip of metal from inside her pockets and jammed it in the gap. She used it to lever the window open; luckily, the DeH house was originally a muggle dwelling and was still made of muggle building materials on the outside even if it was charmed to the teeth on the inside. That made it easy to break into… though; Lucy guessed that the house itself had plenty of anti-dark wizard protections around it. A tiny twelve-year-old girl wouldn't set that off.

The window sprung open with a painfully loud thump. Lucy flinched and listened for a second to make sure that David or Elizabeth hadn't noticed. The television was still on and the happy couple was still snuggled up. Phew. She slipped into Conny's bedroom and landed on the floor almost silently; ducking to make sure she didn't disturb the strands of web. She couldn't shout at Conny: the vibrations of her voice would shake the webs and alert the glass spider to her presence. When it attacked… she would know about it. Then she'd be dead.

Lucy froze. What was she actually going to do? She'd jumped here from Luton so fast but what could she possibly be able to do to save Conny? She took her wand out of her pocket and held it tightly in her hand. The hieroglyphs glittered in the refraction from the glass spider's webs. She couldn't use it, or she'd get expelled. Lucy was used to breaking rules, but there were some rules that her brothers would kill her for breaking.

So she'd have to do it without magic.

Lucy sucked in a breath. She was a pureblooded witch. She'd lived her life within the wizarding community, and there had always been a brother around to get her anything she wanted. Not now.

She shifted her weight evenly. There must be a pathway through them without setting the spider off. She knew a bit about glass spiders; Alexi was particularly fond of them. By the looks of it, the egg sac was less than an hour from hatching, and when it did… Conny was dead.

Lucy took a breath and began to weave through the webs, years of gymnastics and a very small, thin body working to her advantage. She ducked and rolled low, made precarious one-footed hops and sucked her stomach in to get through the small gaps even though it really didn't make any difference. It was so hazardous, as each tiptoed step, each painful twist of the spine, each nearly impossible reach, made sweat break out on Lucy's brow and her chest hurt to bursting.

She was up against the wall quickly, but the wriggling egg sac had become frantic. Conny stirred in her sleep and turned over, muttering some nonsense about chocolate rabbits and snorting loudly. Just two metres away. She could prod Conny awake, and then they could make their careful way back outside, owl the ministry urgently… yes, that would work!

"Conny!" Lucy hissed quietly, perched unsteadily on one knee with her head jerked to the side. "Conny!"

"…Mmnn, take the unicorn, Mrs. Thatcher…"

"Conny, wake up!" Lucy prodded her squishy cheek painfully hard. "You great lazy lump, c'mon!"

"…Mm… hmm? Is it already morning?" Conny's eyelids fluttered open. Her hazel eyes met Lucy's, which in the dangerous and beautiful light of the crystal threads were a flushed rust colour.

"Conny," Lucy said, very slowly, very quietly, keeping eyes contact. "I need you to be very calm, very quiet, and not move a muscle."

"Lucy? Why're you here?" Conny tried to move but Lucy hissed at her to stay down. Her elbow nearly upset a long, drooping strand nearby.

"Shhh." Lucy gestured to the room. "You really need to listen to me."

"I am." Conny's eyes widened at the presence of the webs. "This… this is earlier than your brother said!"

"My brothers say a lot of shit between them." Lucy said. "Now, we can get out without disturbing the spider. It's blind. It will only know where we are if we touch the webs."

"What happens if it knows where we are?"

"Its babies will eat us and turn us to glass from the inside out."

"Ah." Conny's eyes were glued to the mummy spider. "Lucy, I ask you for a window and you send me a killer spider!"

"I didn't!" Lucy protested, trying to keep her voice down. Conny maneuvered out of bed. "I asked Alexi to send you a window. He… he chose to use a glass spider."

"Does he want to kill me!?"

"Probably." Lucy said quietly. "Right- go under that one. No- ergh! No, under, to the left… Circe you're clumsy!"

Conny scowled at her. She didn't appreciate Lucy right now. Sure, she was saving Conny from slow painful semi-death and being eaten by tiny glass spiders, but she'd also started the whole mess! Never ask a sexy crime lord for help! "I'm not as skinny as you Lucy, or as flexible. I can't fit through some of those gaps."

Lucy looked disapprovingly at her as she yawned widely and rubbed sleep out of her eyes. "There must be another route."

"Couldn't we just try and make a run for it?"

"The spider is faster than either of us!"

"Yes, but…" Conny looked around at it again. She had the most creepy feeling that it could see her; despite Lucy saying it was blind. Whatever the case, it was staring right at her.

The crystal egg sac made a very faint cracking sound. Conny was a little bit sick in her mouth. "Oh god."

"Don't-"

It was no good. Conny had made a run for it. She flew through the webs, each sticking to her pyjamas, sprinting towards the open window.

"It's crystal you stupid sod!" Lucy shouted. Conny was all stuck, tangled up. Chairs screeched along the floor downstairs. "Shit."

The glass spider reared, its long, blue fangs protruding and clear, full of venom. It scuttled fast along its webs, pulled closer by the struggling Conny, the look of ecstasy nearly visible on its twisted, reflective face…

David DeH burst through the door with his wand out at the exact same time that Lucy threw herself at the spider.

The world was in slow motion as Lucy made her decision and jumped, putting herself and her fist straight in the path of the spider. She made contact with the jutting fangs and the body of the spider. Her face contorted in a picture of cruel agony and she fell to the ground. The spider crawled up from under her onto her head, its sharp legs tangled in Lucy's dark hair.

"Oh my gosh." Elizabeth said quite politely before passing out. David was different. He'd lived and fought through a wizarding war. He worked detaining dark magical shipping.

"_Immobulus!" _He shouted. A warped jet of air whorled around he glass spider and it froze in midair (it had been lunging towards the struggling Conny), glittering like a macabre disco ball.

"What on earth is going on?" David asked, pocketing his wand and running over to his daughter, dragging all the webs off her. "Conny, what's all this?"

"It's- oh, shit!"

"Language, young lady!"

"Daddy… behind you!"

The baby spiderlings had arrived.

"_Protego!_" A hundred tiny crystal bodies rebounded off David's shield. He held it while he helped Elizabeth up and held her close. However, he couldn't keep the two spells up in conjunction and the mummy spider was freed.

"Okay," He breathed, his eyes flicking between the horde of babies and the angry mummy. "I will accept in this context that shit was appropriate."

"Thank you." Conny said, taking her wand out. Its puzzle-box handle was shifting rapidly in response to the danger. "Daddy, if I use magic, promise not to let me get expelled?"

"You can use magic in life-threatening circumstances, sweetheart." David said, his eyes flickering to Lucy. "Is she okay?"

"No." Conny's heart leapt. "Oh Circe, she's- dad, we need to get the spider out. Quickly."

"You take the big one, I'll get the little ones. The charm is _convulso_."

"Convulso?"

"It's Latin for shatter. They're glass. So they should shatter, right?"

Conny gave him a look. "You just made that charm up."

He shrugged. "Sometimes you have to improvise."

She turned to the mummy spider. Its hollow crystal fangs were filling with blue venom again. Lucy was perfectly still on the floor. Her hand was frozen and turning see-through. "You aren't going to ruin my disaster-free Christmas!"

"DON'T TALK TO IT, KILL IT!" David roared, shattering baby spiders left right and centre as yet more flung themselves at him and Liz.

Conny turned back to the glass spider. "Convulso!" She yelled. A weak splutter of white came out of her wand and bounced straight off the spider's reflective body. "Convulso! Convulso!" It wasn't bloody working!

The glass spider jumped. Conny ducked and jumped to the side, landing hard on her ribs by her armoire. It followed her as she sloppily cast protego, rebounding it only just enough. Something pierced her shoulder and she slapped off a stray baby spider, who'd used its needle-sharp crystal legs to gouge a hole down to her clavicle. "Protego!"

The spider was again repelled, but it just seemed to be getting bigger and angrier and Conny was rapidly getting tangled in more webs. Why one earth had she accepted a dangerous magical creature from a strangely attractive criminal? Why? What had possessed her?

She tripped and fell hard on her carpet. The glass spider pounced, landing heavily on her chest, gleaming with menace, its eight eyes fixed with singular, gloaming lust upon the scent of her terror. It almost grinned. Dread caused her to choke. Memories of Avery and the Cruciatus curse stabbed cold fear into her heart. Not again. Why did all the dying have to happen to her? Why couldn't Corfax regularly stick his piggy nose where it didn't belong and end up barbecued?

The spider reared. Conny whispered something important to herself. The end came so fast-

But it didn't.

Conny opened her eyes. The spider was still ready, still just an inch away from sealing her fate, but…

"Go. Conny. Do it." Lucy garbled, her wand clenched between her teeth, the end fizzling with an immobilizing charm. Her arm and shoulder were completely crystal and immovable.

"But-"

"For fuck's sake, kill it!" Lucy screamed, her wand rolling out of her mouth. Conny grasped her own and with tears streaming down her cheeks, yelled at the top of her voice…

"CONVULSO!"

The spell erupted from her wand in a whirlpool of broiling energy, tempered to a point, hitting the glass spider straight in its ugly eyes. It flew across the room and smashed against the wall, shattering into a million tiny pieces.

The glass spider was gone. It babies were piles of crystal dust hanging in the air. The world was briefly silent.

Lucy groaned on the floor.

"Oh my god!" Conny sat up and ran over to her. "Lucy…"

She was turning to glass. She was dying.

"Daddy!" Conny looked up at him imploringly. David left Elizabeth and came to kneel next to Lucy, turning her over, exposing the full extent of the damage.

"Honey… there's no antidote. No countercurse. These are illegal and dangerous for a reason."

"But… but it's Lucy!"

"I know, sweetheart." David put his hand on her shoulder. "I just… how did this happen?"

Conny's stomach dropped. Should she lie? Should she tell him about the In-Between house?

"I… I don't know."

"You're lying." David said slowly, making eye contact. "Honey, you're lying. Don't lie to us, please. It's a slippery slope."

Conny nodded. "I'm… sorry. I shouldn't have kept this from you. But now's not the time! I'll tell you, I promise, but… Lucy needs help."

"You can't help her. She's gone."

"DON'T SAY THAT!" Conny yelled at him, her hand clasping around Lucy's cold, solid one. "She's still alive! Look, she's breathing, her eyes are open, please, daddy, please…"

"I'm sor-"

"She saved my life once." Conny interrupted quietly. "I drowned in the bath. Lucy got the water out of my lungs and got me to the hospital wing. I owe her. I owe her this, dad, please."

David's brow furrowed as he looked down to Lucy. "I suppose… we can try St. Mungo's."

"THEN GO!"

David took Conny's hand, took Lucy's, and apparated, just like that. Elizabeth, left in the doorway, sighed and went to the cupboard to get the hoover. Wizards and their mess.


	16. Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen: A Visit to St. Mungo's

The house was dark. The Ra brothers didn't need light to work, being night workers and denizens of the darkness themselves, but one room did show faint lambency in the form of a low, purple fire flickering in the dusty grate.

"More wine, Lucius?"

A man dressed all in black shook his head. He wore his flawless, shoulder-length blonde hair back in a ponytail tied with green ribbon, and had a snake-headed cane resting against the knee of his immaculately tailored business robes.

"No, thank you." His voice was low and silky.

"Very well." Ali put the decanter down. "If you aren't staying, perhaps we should wrap this up."

"Of course."

Alexi crossed his legs, furthest away from the fire, and stirred. "There is the matter of reciprocation."

"I assure you, your help will be well-accounted for." Lucius Malfoy drawled, finishing his wine and placing the goblet down. "If you come through, that is."

Jahnen snorted quietly. "Mister Malfoy, have we ever disappointed you or your associates yet?"

"There is a first time for everything."

"That spell _will _work, Malfoy." Alexi cut in. "It was not cheap to find and even less so to procure and store. Getting it into the country… incurred significant costs, what with the security increase in the shipping industry."

"…How much?" Malfoy asked, his smile turning sour.

"Are you paying in gold or favours?"

"Gold. I do not like being indebted to… your ilk."

"Our ilk?" Asked Jahnen, a vein bulging in his forehead.

"Subordinates." Malfoy said. "I would prefer to deal with Khai."

"Khai is in Azkaban, Malfoy, and he isn't going to get out any time soon." Ali tiredly pointed out. "If you want to deal with him so badly, you have plenty of strings you could pull at great expense to get in contact with him, or even get him released early."

"Not that you are willing to stick your finger too deeply in our very messy pie." Food metaphors were a favourite of Jahnen's, as was food itself. "For now, you deal with us. If it helps you sleep at night, consider us as a multi-bodied, less attractive proxy for Khai."

"How droll." Malfoy said, nodding slightly. "Then I will see you at my mansion tomorrow, Mr. Ra. You bring your spell, I bring my money."

"You bring _lots_ of your money, Malfoy."

"Indeed." Lucius Malfoy stood and shook hands with the brothers. "Has there been any news of Maenalus?"

"No. He moves too fluidly within the muggle community."

"Pathetic excuse for a murdering squib that he is…" Malfoy rolled his eyes and furrowed his brow. "Well, if any sources come up positive, I should know before you do. Understood?"

"Of course, _Mister_ Malfoy." Alexi, who hadn't stood up to shake Malfoy's hand, said acerbically.

"I don't enjoy your tone, Ra."

"I don't enjoy yours either, Malfoy." Alexi cocked his head, a smile beginning to dance on his lips.

"You think you are superior to me?"

"I know I'm superior to you."

Malfoy grimaced. Ali made an angry gesture to Alexi to shut up.

"You don't scare me, Ra. None of you do."

"Khai does." Alexi said. "Khai makes you toss and turn at night while your lovely wife and your little boy sleep easy. Because he knows things about you that even you don't."

"Khai is worthy of my time. You are all peons."

"Khai _demands_ your time." Ali cut in. "And so do other matters away from here. I expect you tomorrow."

Malfoy, with a final spiteful glance towards Alexi, dissapparated with a muted crack and a plume of black smoke. The three brothers collectively exhaled.

"You always have to rile them up, don't you, little brother?"

"It's too fun." Alexi poured himself more wine. "Why didn't you tell him about the squib?"

"Some information is too valuable to sell." Jahnen said, sitting down again. "We'll tell him where his bastard brother is when he's willing to pay enough."

"How conniving of you. So you _are_ hiding business acumen somewhere in your rolls of fat." Chuckled Ali.

"Shut up, Ali. You've got enough nose for the whole family. I'll be surprised if your baby can get out of Silvia, if it has your nose- I'll get stuck."

They glared at each other while Alexi chuckled behind his hand. Then a thought seemed to occur to him. "Do either of you two know where Lucy is?"

"No." They said together. "I thought you were minding her?"

"I was. She was doing a shift at the café in Luton, took her break, and never came back."

"And?"

"Well, she floo'd somewhere. I thought she might have come to see one of you, or come here because I told her I'd be here."

"No. She hates this house. She hates Silvia, and she hates my apartment." Said Jahnen. "She floo'd? Where?"

"No idea." Alexi shrugged. "She didn't enter the network from any wizard grates."

"WHAT?"

"In fact, it was through a crematorium fire."

Ali and Jahnen stared at him. "I swear, sometimes, you are even less human than you're meant to be."

"Lucy's generally quite good at handling herself."

"She's twelve years old, Alexi!"

"And?"

"Urgh." Ali shook his head. "Well, I'll get the map out."

He walked over to a very old cupboard and unlocked it with a key from around his neck, lifting out a large framed map of the world and placed it on the table, wiping dust off it with his shirt. "Revelio!"

Several red dots appeared all over the world. Ali tapped his wand to zoom in on the United Kingdom, then again to London, where he saw Lucy's name.

"She's in Shepherd's Bush."

"What? Why?"

"Oh, hang on. She's moved."

"To where?"

"Er… St. Mungo's."

They all exchanged a look. "You are so second dead, Alexi."

The three of them dissapparated together.

-0-

"So, let's get this straight. This girl is neither your daughter nor any relation to you, and was in your house saving your daughter from a glass spider given to her on the first girl's behest of her older brother and it all went very wrong and now the first girl who saved the second girl who is your daughter is turning to crystal?"

David was on the verge of tears. "Yes! By the stars, yes, that's all right, can you cure her now?"

The man at the admissions desk pondered this for a moment. "Well, I can't personally cure her. I need you to fill out some paperwork and return it to me, then I can send you the bites ward where they can give you the specific paperwork so you can get the paperwork that lets somebody cure her."

"If you haven't noticed, she is turning to crystal!"

"Correct paperwork must be filed-"

There was a booming crack as three men appeared right in the middle of the lobby, bringing with them a curious dimming effect. Conny glanced over her shoulder and her stomach sank. "Daddy, we have disturbed the hive and the drones have come out to protect their queen."

"Sweetheart, I'm trying to save Lucy's life. Stop talking about bees."

"Lucy's brothers are walking towards us."

David froze. "Do they look like they're going to kill me?"

"They always look like they're going to kill someone."

"How kill-y do they look now?"

"Very."

David turned around. "Hi! Fancy seeing you here, Mr. Ra. Mr. Ra. And… Mr. Ra."

Alexi thrust out his hand and held David around the neck, lifting him to his tiptoes.

"What the hell did you do to my sister, 'Puff?"

"Nothing!" David spluttered. "N- urgh! Put me d-do-grh!"

"TELL ME!" Alexi roared, his hand tightening like a vice grip on David's throat.

"Stop it!" Conny shouted back, pounding her small hands against Alexi's side. "This is your fault! You gave me that spider!"

Alexi dropped David into a crumpled, gurgling heap on the floor. Several security wizards were stirring on the periphery of the lobby, watching and waiting with their massive baton-thick wands ready to rush the Ra brothers if they caused any trouble.

"What did you say?"

The brothers rounded on Conny. She balked. "Um… er…"

"Spit it out!" Alexi said. "And Ali, fill out that paperwork quickly."

"Right." Ali went to the paperwork. Jahnen went to cradle Lucy's rapidly crystallizing body. That just left Alexi to spit fire at Conny.

"Talk. Now."

Conny gulped. "Look, the spider… it came into my house. Sooner than you said. While I slept. It was going to make babies, and it was going to… Lucy saved me."

Alexi cursed violently and went as red in the face as his pale complexion would allow. "Of _course_ she did. Because she's your friend. I knew that allowing Lucy time to 'be a kid' and 'settle in' was a bad idea!"

"Lucy _is_ a kid!"

"Don't talk about things you don't understand." Alexi said quietly, threateningly. "If Lucy didn't like you so much, she wouldn't have compromised herself for you."

"So it's wrong to have friends?"

"It's wrong to _die _for your friends."

Conny looked hard at him. For some reason, he'd lost his attractive mystique. "You're just like Lucy's other brothers. You don't care about her. You care about the assets she brings to you."

"We are all Lucy has." He hissed.

"You're stupid. Lucy has me, and my parents, who treat her better than you. She has Polly and Anna, who send her post and care about how her day was. She has Jon who she teases, and Ralphus who is absolutely wicked to her and she back."

"That's all very twee." Alexi ignored Conny's words as Ali triumphantly brandished the paperwork in the clerk's face. Jahnen picked Lucy up and the three brothers collectively swooped out of the lobby and through the main corridor towards the stairs.

"Dad." Conny helped David to his feet. "Do we chase after her?"

David sighed. "If anyone can cure her, it's the Healers here or her brothers. It's best we go home and wait."

"But-"

"Conny, I know she's your best friend, but… she's also their sister."

"She's their _property_!"

"Sweetie, we can't do anything. Well, _you_ are going to tell me how the hell this happened, but we are going to do so at home, over tea, and you are going to be in a lot of trouble."

"But-"

David gave her his 'strict dad' stare and she shut up mid-sentence. He offered his hand and they apparated out of St. Mungo's and back home, narrowly avoiding landing on top of Elizabeth, who was whistling the theme from _Star Wars _and hoovering up (very noisily) the last of the glass webs ground into Conny's carpet.

"Oh, you're home." She said lightly. "I ordered Chinese."

David gave her a quick kiss. "Thank you, love. Conny, let's talk about this downstairs. Liz, I'll put the kettle on. Take your time."

Conny and Liz shared a look before Conny was dragged downstairs and placed sitting by the kitchen table. David chose to remain standing.

"Go through it all. From the beginning. No lies. You're not good at lying."

Conny took a deep breath. How much should she tell her dad? Not any of the stuff that had happened last year. What about… no. Okay, just about the in-between house. She told her dad about finding the house on her wanderings, about wanting to renovate it, about why all the muggle cleaning supplies in the house were missing. Then she revealed asking Lucy for the window, and how Lucy had asked her brother, and how her brother had got them into this whole mess.

"So this is Alexi Ra's fault?" David sighed, rubbing his temples. "He misinformed you about the glass spider?"

"I'm not sure. He said to contact him around Boxing Day."

"But the spider decided to kill you early. Gods, what were you thinking? You know the reputation of the Ra family!"

"I just… I thought Lucy would send a normal window. I didn't know that wizards used glass spiders!"

"We don't!" David cried. "They are illegal! So, so, illegal! It was banned years ago! I thought you were meant to be a Ravenclaw! Smart! You should have been suspicious of something that is that dangerous!"

"I just thought-"

"You didn't think, Conyeri! You trusted Lucy and look where it nearly got you!"

"I do trust Lucy! The thing that went wrong is that Lucy trusted her brother!"

"It's the same difference!"

"It isn't!" Conny pounded her fist on the table. "Lucy is not like her brothers! Lucy is kind and came to save me!"

"From a situation she created herself, honey."

"Not her fault." Conny said, her vision tearing up. "I don't want Lucy to die because she trusted her brother when she shouldn't have. I don't want Lucy to suffer for saving me again."

That silenced David. He took a seat and clasped his hands together, breathing deeply. "Okay. Okay, I'll calm down. Are you okay? I haven't asked that yet."

"I'm fine. I got a cut in my shoulder, but it's fine."

"You sure?"

"Yes, I checked it. It's clean."

"That's good." The doorbell rang. David paid for the Chinese and brought it in. Conny got chicken chow mein and Szechuan chicken. David had shredded chili beef with special fried rice, and Elizabeth had Pad Thai. They ate in relative silence, and Conny felt genuinely terrible. How could she have thought that she could keep all of the dangerous adventures and potentially disastrous cavorting and meddling she did secret? How was it okay to omit what she'd suffered by Avery's hand or Killory and the time police? Curiosity killed the cat, and Conny by that adage was basically the walking dead, what with all the nose-sticking she'd been doing in other peoples' business.

"Conny, we need to talk punishments." David said heavily. "You shouldn't conceal things from us. I suppose… you never really got in trouble when you were smaller. So we didn't really enforce any boundaries, because you were really well behaved. But now you're a teenager… maybe we need some ground rules."

Rules. The teenage rules talk. Second only to the sex talk. Conny flinched at the idea.

"Honey, we don't mind that you're very independent. We think it's brilliant that you wanted to do up an old wizard house because you felt like the person who left it like that deserved it. It's fine that Lucy is your best friend, even if her brothers aren't good people. We'd just like you to be a little more open with us. Write more often. Tell us where you're going when you leave the house."

"So you're keeping tabs on me?"

"No, sweetheart, don't think of it like that." Elizabeth said kindly. "Most kids don't have anything like this kind of freedom. We just… we don't want something like this happening again. We want you to be safe and healthy."

"But… but I'm…" Conny couldn't articulate her feelings well enough. The feeling was frustrating, because Conny was usually very good at talking. She gave up, because she knew that her parents were right, however little she wanted to admit it. She did put her life in danger. Several times. Her back twinged, as it and the massive scar on it often did when she was feeling uncomfortable. "Okay."

"Okay. That's good, sweetheart. We're glad you're okay."

"Yes." Elizabeth agreed. "And maybe tomorrow you can show us this… In-Between House, as you call it?"

"Show you the house? Why?" Conny asked.

"Because I can't quite believe that you did any cleaning voluntarily." Elizabeth giggled. "And I want my scouring pads back. There's some suspicious mildew in our bathroom that keeps making lewd suggestions at me when I shave my legs."

"Ew! Didn't need to know that, mum!"

"The same mildew that keeps swearing at me?" David asked her. "I tried to vanish before the guests arrived for Christmas."

"Oh, Dad… you didn't try to vanish Salacious Spore, did you?"

"That's what it is?"

"Didn't you pay any attention in Herbology or Transfiguration?"

"No, I didn't." David said, rolling his eyes. "Why, shouldn't I have vanished it?"

"Technically the Salacious Spore possesses a brain and therefore a reasonable amount of sentience, so the Vanishing spell you used, with the intent to get rid of the mould, would have been totally ineffectual because the signature of the divergent sentience messes up the-"

"Sweetie, as much as I love that you're super smart, my brain hurts enough already. Can you get rid of it?"

"Sure. I'll have a look at my books and tell you what spell to use."

"And tomorrow we can see the house?"

"Sure. But we have to check on Lucy… first."

"Lucy will be fine. We'll go see her as soon as visiting hours start tomorrow."

"What if she's a jazzed up Nelson's Column by tomorrow?"

David gave her a look. "Conny, if there are any human beings on this earth who have the money, the attitude and the complex psychological devotion to cure Lucy of an incurable bite, it's her brothers."

"I know." Conny sighed. "I just… if Lucy wasn't there, I don't know… she's my best friend, Daddy. Despite how we fight and how she acts sometimes… Lucy's always been there for me. I feel bad not being there for her."

"I know, sweetheart." Elizabeth took her hand across the saltcellar. "It's hard. This has all happened very, very fast. It's past two in the morning- you should get a little bit of sleep before what will happen tomorrow."

"What… what will happen tomorrow?"

"We'll worry about that when and as it comes." Liz said. "I'll bring you a glass of water."

"Can I sleep with you tonight?" Conny asked quickly. "I know I'm thirteen and it's a childish thing to do but… but I don't want to be in my room alone tonight. It's creepy."

"That's fine." David and Liz smiled at their daughter, who was perhaps not as grown-up and independent as they had thought. "Let's go. And you better not hog the duvet."

-0-

St. Mungo's was even busier on Boxing Day than it had been last night. All the injuries that people had thought were too embarrassing or not urgent enough to bother ruining Christmas. David, Liz and Conny, who were holding a box of nougat sphinxes in the optimistic hope that Lucy retained a working oesophagus to eat them. A woman who was partially transfigured into a Christmas tree tottered and belched fairy lights up to the fourth floor. A whole family with Brussels sprouts that had been mysteriously stuffed in every orifice waddled uncomfortably with grimaces on their faces around the lobby. There were many cases of homemade eggnog brewed in improperly cleaned cauldrons resulting in strange, strange maladies that were being shepherded up to the second floor. A teenaged boy with blue, lizard-like skin and ears slightly drooping like melting ice cream. Two giggly, obviously drunk middle-aged ladies had grown antlers. It was depressing.

The DeHayersaes signed in to visit Lucy in a dubious sounding place called the "Dangerous" Dai Llewellyn Ward for serious bites. It was through a monotonous corridor and up a daggy, lino-covered set of stairs, with pictures of snooty-looking healers in lime green robes who'd got such accomplishments as 'Least Successful Removal of a Squid from the bowel' or 'Inventor of the Yeast infection'. Lucy's ward was dingy and smelled of disease. There was one tiny, slitty window that was letting in pale morning light. A cluster of crystal baubles, red and green for the season's festivities, gave off the light that the ward needed. Two men were bustling about the beds, dosing out morning medication.

"Hello. You must be visiting." The older one said He looked familiar. "Who are you here for?"

"Lucy Ra."

"Ah." The Healer's face darkened. "I must dose out this medication. My trainee healer Mr. Smethwyck will update you on Lucy's condition."

The younger healer smiled and ushered them over to the furthest bed. The ward was wood-paneled, making the light even weaker, so Lucy, in the corner, was shrouded in darkness.

"We had to dim the lights really far down. It kept reflecting off her and blinding other visitors."

That was not a good thing to say. Mr. Smethwyck seriously needed to train his bedside manner.

Lucy was in a bad way. Her whole right side was a rigid structure of crystal. Or glass. Whatever clear prismatic structure it was, it wasn't good. Blinking furiously, Lucy's eyes snapped over to them.

"Shame we brought the sphinxes." David said sadly. "How is she doing?"

"At least one of her brothers has been here day and night. The fat one just went to get some food on the fifth floor. They've given her cure after potion after counter-curse and nothing has worked… say what you want about the Ra family, but they really, really care about their little sister."

"Mm." David said equivocally.

"They've managed to slow down the progression of the venom, but they're in and out with wierder and weirder cures all the time. I've nearly finished my healer training and I've never heard of half the things they tried."

"Well, I'm sure they're just trying really hard to save her."

"They sure are." Mr. Smethwyck said wistfully. "I need to go over and administer a Clotting Draught to Mr. Peters."

"Thank you for your help, Mr. Smethwyck." David said before turning back to Lucy. "Oh gods, Conny, you shouldn't have to see this. I'm sorry."

Conny nodded weekly and burrowed her head into her dad's jumper, looking at Lucy's prone, still body on the bed. Tears streamed down her face, and she was shuddering, juddering, sobbing. It was as though she was trying to decorate David's jumper with her snot.

"D-d-daddy." She sobbed. "They're g-going t-t… " Sniff, "Find a c-cure, right? Lucy b-brothers will… Sniff, "They'll save her."

"They'll try their best, honey."

The family sighed in unison. "I'll tell you what, Conny. Your mum and me will go upstairs and have a cup of coffee in the café. Maybe you can sit with Lucy for a while, talk to her."

"Okay." Conny said. Her parents gave her short squeezes on the shoulder before leaving with one last glance backwards. Once the door was closed and the two healers far away enough, Conny stood closer to Lucy's bedside and clasped her good hand. "Oh god, Lucy, I'm so sorry."

Lucy raised one eyebrow, the only one she could raise, in communication. She seemed to say, _I'm the one who got you into this in the first place._

"But you're always saving me." Conny argued. "You're always hurting and then taking it back. Like you can't decide."

_I'm sorry._

"Don't be sorry. You were only trying to do me a favour. I… I shouldn't have taken you for grated like that.

_Don't be stupid._

"I'm not- god, it's useless arguing with you. I don't want arguing to be the last- I mean, I don't think we should argue now."

_Don't you dare start picking out my tombstone._

Conny was about to reply when she heard footsteps and voices coming along the corridor. Voices she knew to be Lucy's brothers. She should run, or move away, or hide in the corner somewhere, or, or, they hated her, all alone in the ward they might, the might-

Conny then did what she always did when she got very stressed about being caught doing something. She accidentally transfigured herself into a bedside table.

As soon as she'd done so, which was an unpleasant experience at best, the three non-imprisoned Ra brothers swept in arguing hotly with each other. She could almost feel Lucy rolling her eyes.

"…And if this doesn't work, we've half-bankrupted ourselves for nothing."

"It will work." The deeper voice of Jahnen spat. "Because if it doesn't, I will kill that doddery old lady and sell her bones for toothpicks and wand handles."

"Just calm it. It's not a big deal. We'll break even."

"Break even?"

"Well, this cure cost us just less than the money Malfoy coffed up this morning for the spell. Stupid man."

"So we do break even."

"Yes."

"Well, no time to waste. Give her the potion."

"What if-"

"No 'what ifs', Ali." Alexi said quietly, in that way he did which cut through conversation without even raising his voice. Even as a bedside table, Conny felt threatened by the fact that he was resting his hand on her. "Administer it now."

There was movement as Ali leant over Lucy and poured the potion in her mouth. With a silent pop, Conny grew eyes out of the wood of the bedside table and blinked a couple of times. Hmm. Who knew that bedside tables saw in saturated Technicolor, like pirate movies?

"How long?"

"The woman said half an hour minimum."

"Then we'll come back in half an hour. We're a walking target here. Any Ministry pig can hex us right down and say we caught Murderous Measles from a passing sneezing warlock or something."

"Fine."

They left, like bats from a cave at night, closing the door behind them. Conny sighed with as much relief as a bedside table could and looked at Lucy, who didn't look much better. Then again, half an hour had to pass. Conny strained and contorted, growing arms, legs, skin and hair again. It was harrowing. Conny knew that transfiguration was no joke, and that spontaneous, unplanned, wandless transfiguration could do her serious harm, but it had its perks. Sure, it would be more useful if she could transform into a Concorde, but beggars can't be choosers. There weren't many places that an attractive plywood bedside table looked incongruous.

Conny picked up the empty potion bottle that had been placed on her head and looked at it. The ingredient list was tiny, cursive, and written in Latin, so Conny had no idea what was in it, but she was faintly certain that 'puluerem pullum pedes' meant puréed chicken feet. Any potion with puréed chicken feet in it was bound to be dodgy.

"What're you doing with that?" A voice asked from behind her. Conny dropped the potion and the empty bottle clattered to the floor, its anti-shatter charm making it bounce slightly. She wheeled around to see the stern-looking middle-aged head Healer of the ward with crossed arms looking at her disapprovingly.

"I- uh- I didn't… it's not mine. Her brothers brought it. They just left it here."

"I'm sure." He said, striding towards her and proffering his hand. "Give it to me."

She handed the potion over. He looked very like…

"Derek Mothley!"

"Pardon?" He asked, affronted.

"You're Rissa and Derek's dad, aren't you?"

"…Yes. And you are?" He raised an elegant blonde eyebrow at her. All the posh pureblood families she knew were blonde. Why was that?

"Conny DeH. I'm a Ravenclaw in your children's' year."

"Pleasure." He boredly went back to reading the potion. Evidently, by the shocked and puzzled facial expressions he was making behind thick glasses, he could read the tiny Latin ingredients. "This is as likely to kill her as it is to make her better."

"She'd die anyway." Conny pointed out, snatching it back. "It's a glass spider bite, sir."

"I know what it is." Healer Mothley snapped. "And I also know that that potion, if it works, would be a medical breakthrough. And I the one to make it. Give it to me."

"No! It's not yours! You didn't invent it, you would be stealing it!"

"Of course, child, of course." Hr. Mothley rolled his eyes and held out his hand again. "Listen. I am going to postulate that you used some underage magic. Actually, I am not postulating. I know that you did, because my contacts at the Ministry know you did. I keep a keen eye on Lucy Ra."

"Why?"

"None of your business." He sniffed. "The only reason you haven't been asked to a hearing is that Clarissa asked me to pull strings so that Lucy would not get into trouble. I will make the trial and any criminal record go away. As far as the Ministry will be concerned, neither you nor Lucy performed any underage magic, nor did you violate the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery."

"What's the catch?"

"You give me that potion."

Conny didn't even have to think about it. She handed the vial over to Hr. Mothley quickly. He pocketed the potion and strode over to Lucy's bedside. "Good choice. How long does it take to work?"

"Half an hour."

Hr. Mothley nodded and briefly examined Lucy. "I see no change, but it hasn't been long, I presume."

"No sir."

"Good. I suggest neither you nor I are here when Messurs Ra return to check on her, lest I have to heal you. Or worse, send you down to the morgue."

"Yessir."

"Good. You may have just made me very renowned and very rich. Well, more so than I already am."

"And you'll make the legal stuff go away?"

"I have more influence in my little toe than you will have in your entire life. Do not worry yourself on it."

He was about as humble as Rissa, too. Well, at least he wasn't killing her. That would be bad. Rissa had… asked that he save Lucy from legal persecution? That seemed decidedly out of character for the cold, emotionless Mothley twin. Still, Conny knew that a long time ago, Lucy and Rissa had been friends, and that during those times Rissa had been different. Volatile, angry, destructive. She'd taken copious amounts of the calming Draught of Peace to change that over the years and it had made her a very, very calm person, almost to the level of total emotional detachment. Lucy on the other hand hadn't changed her irascible, trouble-making ways, though perhaps she was a bit more subtle and conniving.

Conny put it out of mind. She bowed profusely to Hr. Mothley, who left humming happily to himself with his hand in his pocket. Conny felt like she'd done a good thing, even though it didn't seem like it. Maybe if Rissa's Dad could recreate the potion to cure an incurable bite, he could brew something that would grow Rissa the requisite facial muscles to smile.

That was harsh.

"He's a bit of a dick, hm?" Lucy said from behind her.

"LUCY!" Conny sprang to her side and grabbed her hand. The crystal covering her face had almost totally converted back into flesh, leaving only a refracting, planar ear and neck. "Oh my gosh, you're okay, it worked, it worked! I am going to kiss whatever old lady made that potion!"

"Hold your horses." Lucy wheezed, flinching. "I feel like crap."

"Half your body is made of glass." Conny squeezed Lucy's hand, staring deeply into her eyes, crying again. "Oh god, Lucy… I so thought I'd lose you."

"Well," Lucy squeezed back, smiling as much as her lopsided face would allow, "You didn't."

"I didn't." Conny grinned, stroking Lucy's lustrous black hair. "You're going to live. And we're going to stay together, you and me and Jon and everyone."

"Yeh." Lucy said. "Hey, Conny, you know I'm all sick?"

"Yes."

"You know what makes me feel better?"

"No."

"Chocolate sphinxes."

Conny's eyes widened. "I don't have them any more."

"What about in the drawer in your chest?"

Conny looked down. Indeed there was a drawer still in her chest. "I always forget that!"

Out of it, she pulled the packet of sphinxes and a ballpoint pen. "You know, Conny, I'd worry about the things you find in there."

The drawer morphed back into her chest. Lucy gave a low whistle. "What?"

"Conny, when did you grow boobs?"

Conny blushed scarlet to the roots of her chocolate-coloured hair. "Long story."

"I got time."

"No you don't. You're brothers are coming back in twenty minutes."

"Fuck them, I want to spend time with you."

An old man with a gravity-defying moustache and what looked like a full set of doxy teeth embedded in his forehead cleared his throat loudly at the cussword. Lucy weakly stuck her tongue out at him. "Give him the finger for me, Conny?"

"No way." Conny shook her head. "I do not do that kind of thing. And for all we know he could be the Deputy Minister for Magic of Scotland or something."

"Wales." He corrected them sternly.

"Sorry, sir."

"You're Bagnold's problem, not mine." He harrumphed. "Now be quiet. I'm an old man and I've got doxy teeth in my face. I need rest."

"Sure thing, sir." Lucy said. "Old people are weird."

"So are you, Lucy."

"And you." Lucy winked. They laughed together. They giggled until the Welsh Deputy Minister plugged his ears with two of the doxy teeth and glowered at the ceiling. Conny's sides hurt. Chocolate sphinxes were consumed and Lucy recounted, briefly, the whole story of what happened, and how terrible she felt and why she would kill Alexi when her hands worked again.

A bell chimed somewhere and Conny gasped. "It's been half an hour. I have to go."

"Really?"

"Really really." Conny said, standing up and stuffing the chocolate sphinx wrappers into her pockets. "Owl me. You're coming over before we get the train. I'm not having you turning tables in Luton for New Year."

"I will."

"Don't do anything stupid!" Conny shouted as she skidded out of the door and up to the café. Lucy, left behind, sighed and tried to wiggle her toes. It would take time for her to recover, but at least Conny was okay. Conny was fine. And they were friends again. No, more than that; they were best friends.

Lucy liked the sound of that.

_Cell Forty-Seven, Azkaban Prison, North Sea_

_Dear Khai,_

_Sorry if my writing is wobbly, but obviously I had crystalware for hands v. recently. Anyway, I don't know if you told Ali & Jah & Lex to save me or not, but they did, so I'll thank you just in case. I'm recovering okay, thanks to their potion. Whoever said glass spider bites were incurable sucks!  
Still, I'm angry at you. I'm going to spend some time thinking about just how angry I am with you, and then I will send you another letter. I just wanted to say I'm okay, since that's the polite thing to do, innit._

_Love,_

_Lucy_


	17. Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen: Jon is… 'Foxy'

"And then, I leapt valiantly in front of Conny's quivering, limp body-"

"It was more of a desperate hop-"

"And let out a battle cry so fierce it resounded through London-"

"A sort of garbled squeal-"

"My fist connected like a titanium battering ram-"

"Hand on guys, I can't tell which story is true when you keep correcting each other." Corfax whined from across the carriage.

"To me, it sounds like they made it up." Gil Lockhart said from where his nose was stuck in the book of Arthurian Legends that Conny had got him for Christmas.

"It is a bit fanciful." Corfax agreed.

Lucy's cat-like grin spread wider across her face. "You wanna see proof?"

"You have proof?"

"Yes indeed." Lucy unwrapped the dressing on her hand and showed them the healing scars where the glass spider's two fangs had pierced her fist. There were two large, red puckered scars each with a diamond scab across it. The rest of the carriage stared open-mouthed. Corfax went a little green and mumbled about needing to vomit. "O Ye of little faith."

"That must have been awesome. All I did was break my wrist snowboarding." Polly said dolefully, "And mum fixed that in like two seconds."

"Chocolate sphinx anyone?" Conny passed them out. Since the whole Lucy-nearly-dying thing, they had become the go-to snack with the Ravenclaw second-year and extended friendship group posse. How could you resist, with a smooth milk chocolate shell and crunchy biscuit wafer inside? If you were extra lucky, the Sphinx would ask you a riddle before it let you eat it.

Jon munched his way through his sphinx quietly. He looked very doe-eyed and wistful.

"Jon, you're drooling." Anna pointed out, folding her wrapper up neatly into an origami flower. "You look even more gormless than usual."

"I'm fine." Jon said ruefully.

"You look like someone killed your puppy."

"Non."

Lucy sighed. "Jon met a girl over Christmas."

The reaction was totally polarized. Polly, Anna and Rosie squealed and aww'd. Gil, Corfax and Mark rolled their eyes and muttered slightly jealously.

"Tell us, Jon!"

"What's she like?"

Jon went bright red and turned towards the window, but Polly pulled him back. "Tell. Us. Jon."

"Merde." Jon sighed. "She's… uh… her name was Hilda… she was ze daughter of a Ministry man zat was staying next to us in ze embassy…"

"Hilda." Anna giggled, "Did she yodel?"

"No!"

"Was she blonde and pretty?"

"Oui."

"Details Jon, details!"

"It's embarrassing!" Jon protested, crossing his legs and staring intently at a mountain in the distance. "Oh, look, it's getting dark, we should change…"

"Yeh're not getting out of it that easily, mate." Rosie giggled, pulling his ear so that he had to face them again. "Did you kiss her?"

"No!"

"Really?"

"Of course not!" Jon protested. "We just… I showed her around Paris, and we had fun. It was nice."

"Aw, Jon, you're such a gentleman!" Anna threw her arms around him. "Will you be my boyfriend?"

"No!"

"Please?"

"No!"

"Tch." Anna slumped back in her seat. "Well, you did say something true. Boys, clear out, we're going to change."

The boys groaned. They always had to stand in the corridor with their backs to the compartment when the girls changed. Jon, Gil, Corfax and Mark filed out and stood with their arms crossed, talking about Quidditch. The girls pulled on their pleated skirts, buttoned up their crisp white school shirts, and forced themselves into jumpers that were just beginning to protest at expanding chest measurements. Grey knee socks were pulled up, shiny black shoes slipped on, and robes neatly fastened. There was a strange thrill in suiting up back into your school uniform, and a sense of anticipation that accompanied it.

"You can come back in now!"

The boys came in. Now, the world was a strange place, because though the boys had to leave while the girls changed, there was no such system vice-versa. The boys were mercilessly judged on what sort of pants they were wearing. Jon seemed to have gone through a pre-puberty manliness crisis, because he had switched from briefs to boxers since they'd last checked. The French flag was proudly displayed on his underwear. Mark was also wearing boxers, though his were plain grey. Both Fax and Gil, sadly, were still wearing briefs. Corfax's had Spiderman on them. Ouch.

"Don't judge me." He said quietly. "The wizards here don't understand."

"They may not know who Spiderman is, Fax, but they still know you're wearing multicoloured pants."

"So is Jon!"

"Jon's wearing boxers."

Corfax huffed and pulled his trousers on rather too quickly. "I still don't understand why we have to biannually show you all our stuff."

"Because you're boys."

"But-"

"Don't argue, Fax, it'll just get you more annoyed." Polly said sagely, plaiting Lucy's hair. "Ooh, I think that's the loch."

"We're closer than we thought."

"Damn, I swear this journey gets shorter and shorter."

"Well, that's good." Fax pointed out. "Since this journey is about seven hours long, any shortening is welcome, is it not?"

"The train ride is important." Lucy interjected, putting things back into her trunk. "You get to catch up with people in a non-Hogwarts context."

"That's true." Polly agreed, as she always did.

"And we all become closer as a family!" Anna said.

"If I could be bothered to groan, I would." Lucy gave Anna a withering look. "Seriously. Anyway, what about the Quidditch coming up, hmm?"

"Ravenclaw-Slytherin is in February."

"Yep. And, since we were absolutely trounced by 'Ufflepuff just before Christmas… we have to win _hard_. Slytherin won against Gryffindor too, so if we beat zem we move up. Zen it just depends on ze points margin between 'Ufflepuff and Slytherin… it all gets complicated." Jon said. The rest of the compartment gaped. Jon never spoke more than one sentence at a time!

"You… you like Quidditch, Jon?"

"Er… oui. A bit."

"That's more than a bit."

"Well… In France, we don't care so much about Quidditch… I think, and I like it a lot, so I miss it when I'm at 'ome." He explained, blushing. Jon blushed a lot. Conny shook her head at his shyness. You'd think that Jon would change, but he didn't. Even if all the other Ravenclaw boys, especially Ralphus, were absolutely foul to him, Jon stayed sweet and innocent. He hadn't even _kissed_ Hilda.

Conny then knew whom she wanted to kiss. She wanted to kiss Az Spooks.

"Crap." She breathed as the train started to slow down.

"What's wrong, Conny?" Jon asked.

"Nothing." She said too quickly. "Nothing, nothing, nothing."

"That's a lot of nothing to be worried about."

"I'm not worried about anything. I just… er, I think I left a textbook at home."

"Which one?"

"Er, a transfiguration one. One of the ones for my extra lessons." Conny was lying. There was no way she'd ever forget one of McGonagall's special books.

"Ouch. Well, maybe McGonagall will be in a good mood and only gouge your eyes out." Lucy put in helpfully.

"Thanks for your support."

"Well, with your sick Transfiguration skills, why don't you summon the book up here?"

"That's Charms, you dunderhead." Conny and Lucy shared a playful look, but her heart was still pounding. Az. Why on earth would she want to kiss Az? She was only a child! Those kinds of things were for adults!

Conny then realized that she was a teenager. Not a child. That was cool, in a way, but it also… it also made her suddenly want to kiss Az Spooks! Just like Jon wanted to kiss his Norwegian belle Hilda!

She missed the conversation that came next and only was jolted back into the real world when Lucy pulled her by the arm out of the compartment and into the bustling throng of the corridor. They dismounted the train and filed over to the horseless carriages. Lucy, Conny, Polly and Anna took one carriage and the others quarteted up appropriately. Conny was vaguely aware that Polly and Anna didn't like her very much. They were Lucy's servants, and Conny was Lucy's equal (or so she hoped), and they didn't like that. Still… she'd hoped that they'd warm to her. Eventually.

The ice on the path made the carriage ride precarious, with the thin wooden wheels slipping and sliding all over the path. Conny was glad she hadn't had too many chocolate sphinxes, or she'd be feeling decidedly icky. They proceeded down the wide main drive in a procession of wobbling black shapes. Though the night was clear, it was hazy near ground level and the castle seemed to be wavering slightly in the moonlight. It was sort of ethereal.

"It looks like the castle is floating." Polly ooh'd, eyes wide. "Knowing the castle, it really could be floating, and we just don't notice."

"Mice could also be pocketwatches, and we just don't notice." Lucy said lazily.

"I can turn a mouse into a pocketwatch." Conny pointed out.

"Can you turn your mouth into your arse?"

Conny thought about it seriously. "Probably not. Maybe in a couple of years."

"I wasn't being literal, Conny."

"I… knew that." Conny lied. Sometimes she had trouble distinguishing what was sarcasm and what was genuine, especially when it related to lessons and school. Perhaps that was something to worry about. "Now we're at school, I can unleash my mad Transfiguration skills on you all."

"But that would be cheating." Polly protested, her toad, Gabrielle, croaking happily on her lap.

"No, it's called intelligence." Conny said, perhaps a bit condescendingly. She'd forgotten how annoyingly nasal Polly's high, wailing voice was. After everything she and Lucy had gone through, Lucy still allowed those two to fawn over her and stroke her ego!

That was just how Lucy was though. No point arguing with it.

"Ooh, Ralphus has had his hair cut, look." Anna pointed to a nearby carriage. Ralphus 'I-am-obviously-superior-to-you-pleb' Crymge, was the son of a pair of Department of Magical Law Enforcement bigwigs who were Lucy's criminal brothers' arch-nemeses. Indeed, he was nervously patting down his hair. Previously he'd worn it in a very mid-eighteenth century British Navy ponytail. Now, it had been jaggedly cut off and he was short-haired. Conny still thought he was a prat.

"You know, Ralphus is kind of handsome." Lucy said.

Conny got whiplash moving her neck so fast. "You're not serious?"

"I am." Lucy said thoughtfully. "Oh, don't get me wrong, I hate his guts and would like to plunge Professor Atremidus's walking stick as deep into his arse as his anatomy allows, but… you've got to admit he's got a very symmetrical face."

"No, Lucy, he looks like a cadaver."

"A handsome cadaver."

"You're sick."

Lucy gave her the finger and continued to stare in a worrying, calculating way towards where Ralphus was disembarking his carriage. Soon, they too had to stop and enter the school through the mammoth double-doors to the entrance hall. Conny realized how hungry she was. Chocolate sphinxes, though tasty, do not make a meal. They were swept up in the crowd pouring into the Great Hall. Peeves was throwing clods of mud down onto everyone's heads from where he was floating above the hourglasses that showed the House Points. Conny, thankful that she could finally use magic, whipped out her wand and subtly deflected the trajectory of an incoming mud pie. It exploded and showered a group of first-years containing Olivia Teppit and Clarence Southerton, who clung to each other in terror as they were splattered. Conny only felt slightly guilty.

Once they were all inside and seated, muddy or otherwise, Dumbledore smiled at the whole school and food erupted onto the tables. The start and end of year feasts were the best, but this one was still excellent. A full British roast, with huge, dripping, steaming joints of beef, lamb, and whole roast chickens. Sixth and Seventh-years were overseeing the carving, afraid that younger students would chop their fingers off given any chance with a large, sharp knife. Conny heaped parsnips and potatoes onto her plate, along with several Yorkshire puddings and a dollop of thick gravy in each. Luke kindly carved her some beef that was still pinkish in the middle.

"You're going to get fat." Lucy warned her, which was hypocritical as she herself had just as much food on her plate. Lucy had always been stick-thin, so she never bothered to watch what she ate.

"Some day your body will remember that it's meant to put on weight and you'll be obese in twenty seconds."

"No chance." Lucy smirked. "My mum was thin, even after having me and my brothers, and so was my grandma, and all the women in my family before that. Jahnen's an amolany."

"Anomaly."

"I said that." Lucy said. "You just don't get my accent."

"That's because it's thick enough to wade through." Said Conny. "If Jon can make so much effort to change his accent, why can't you?"

"Jon is French. I'm from London."

"Jon speaks English better than you do." Conny pointed out. "And I'm from London too."

"You're from a posher part of London. And your parents both speak well. I never got elocution lessons from mine. They were busy treasure-hunting, and then they died."

That ended the conversation very quickly. Conny busied herself spearing green beans with her fork and eating them rapidly.

"So, Conny, you know Spooks, right? The Slytherin seeker?" Luke said through a mouthful of lamb.

"Er, yes." Conny said, blushing furiously. "Why?"

"Because the Ravenclaw-Slytherin match is in just over a month and we're shuddering at the moment." He explained. "I regret not giving you the chaser spot, Lucy. Des Greenbrook is all right… but he isn't a patch on you."

"Then give me the position. Throw Greenbrook off the team."

"No." Luke frowned. "Your attitude sucks. I'd be creating a rift through the team."

"Then he'll become mysteriously ill a couple days before the match and I'll sub."

"Lucy, that is _totally_ unacceptable."

"Unacceptable is my middle name." Lucy pretended to shoot Luke through the head with a spell and blew the imaginary smoke off her imaginary wand.

"Lucy, your middle name is Agnes."

"Shh!" Lucy put her hands over Conny's mouth, turning red. "You are not allowed to let that get out!"

"What, that your middle name is Agnes?"

"Shut up!"

"Agnes, Agnes Ag-"

"_Silencio_!" Lucy hissed, her real wand out this time. Conny's vocal chords ceased up and the next 'Agnes' came out as a tiny croak. She shot daggers at Lucy instead while Luke and Jon guffawed loudly over their antics.

"God, I miss you guys when I'm at home in the holidays." Luke said as the remains of his roast vanished from his plate. "All I think about now is studying for my N.E. , all my Head Boy duties, and Quidditch."

"And me." Ally pointed out from slightly further down the table. "You think about me, Luke."

"And Ally." He amended. "Anyway, I often forget what it's like to just muck around and be twelve again."

"Thirteen." Conny revised smugly as Lucy's weak silencing charm wore off. "I'm thirteen."

"Already?" asked Luke, pretending to be wildly impressed. "Don't grow up too fast."

"She is, Luke." Lucy said as she dug into the bread and butter pudding that had just appeared by her left elbow. "Our little Conny's growing up so fast… she had to buy a bra this Christmas."

Conny gaped and blushed pinker than the strawberry mouse that Corfax was guzzling a table over. "Lucy!" No way that Lucy just said that in front of Luke, who Conny still definitely fancied, despite the fact that she wanted to kiss Az!

"You revealed the Agnes, I reveal the bra."

"Just because you are light years away from growing any breasts anyway!"

"Light years measures distance, not time." Jon said quietly. "You would know zat if you still did Astronomy."

Conny, shocked, looked over at him. Jon never disagreed with anyone. "Well I don't do Astronomy because it's a stupid, useless subject."

"My mother is an Astronomer." Said Jon, his eyes wide and angry. Conny realized too late what she'd said. Damn! She should have remembered Mrs. Lucwitt going to buy telescopes when she'd first met Jon in Diagon Alley!

"Jon, I'm sor-"

"I'm going to bed." Jon cut in, setting his cutlery down and quickly marching out of the Great Hall. Many eyes followed him. Further down the Ravenclaw table, Ralphus sniggered and did a mocking impression.

"Boo-hoo, my name is Frenchie Le-Quitter and I need to go back to my room and cry." He rubbed his eyes and made blubbing sounds. Around him, Lawrence, Derek and Feol hooted and roared.

"I'm so sad because my garlic breath chases away all the girls."

"Not that Jon wants girls, he's such a poof-"

Conny's blood boiled. She could sit by and listen to Jon get ridiculed, barely, but insulting him that way? That was not okay. Her fists clenched and her teeth ground together.

"Don't do anything stupid, Conny."

"Stupid is my middle name."

"Your middle name is Catherine."

"I'm going to kill Ralphus."

It was Luke who tried to stop her. "Conyeri. As much as I want to do just that- and I did swear that I would one day- this isn't the time."

"Bollocks to the right time!" Indignation swelled within Conny, so visceral and angry, so pointed and focused on Ralphus Crymge's stupid pasty face, overwhelming the burning guilt she felt for insulting Jon's mother, that she stood up, took her wand out and pointed it straight at the smug tosspot.

"_Ventus_!"

A spiraling gust of wind exploded from the tip of her wand and literally knocked Ralphus out of his seat. He flew backwards and landed hard next to a tureen of winter vegetable soup. It splashed all over him and scalded him through his jumper. He yelped and held his hands in front of his head.

"Miss DeHayersae!" Shrieked a voice from the high table. Conny's heart dropped with a thunk into her stomach. "What on earth are you doing?"

The whole hall fell silent and Conny, though her blood was pounding in her ears, suddenly felt the quiet and their eyes on her. Somebody roughly grabbed her by the shoulder and took her wand.

"Outside, now!" Flitwick jumped out of his seat and strode – as much as a man his height could stride – towards her. Luke manhandled her down the centre of the Hall, all eyes on her, giggles and whispers all abound. Some people were laughing at her. Others, wide-eyed, muttered about how cool or daring that was. Several people thanked her for giving Ralphus his comeuppance.

Flitwick was _livid_.

"Merlin, what were you thinking, Conyeri?" he squeaked once they'd left the Great Hall and gone through a door guarded by two ugly gargoyles- to the staffroom. Luke forced her down into one of the mismatched dark chairs.

"I wasn't." She replied, adrenaline wearing off and leaving her shaking. "Oh, Professor, I'm so sorry… Ralphus was just being so beastly…"

"I know he can be unpleasant," Flitwick sighed, his arms crossed over his deep blue robes, "But that is no reason to attack him! In front of the whole school, and all of the teachers, Conyeri…"

"I'm sorry, Professor."

"That is nice, Conyeri, but it doesn't change how you behaved." Said Flitwick, his brow furrowed. He shared a look with Luke and then checked the grandfather clock across the room. "You put the reputation of my house – our house – in jeopardy. And you attacked Ralphus, provoked or not. I… I thought you were smart!"

"With the greatest respect, Professor," Luke spoke up, his hand on Conny's shoulder, "Conny's intelligent. Very Intelligent. But she's thirteen years old and Ralphus brazenly insulted one of her best friends. What would you have done when you were her age?"

Something in the skeptical look Flitwick gave Luke told Conny that Luke was pushing it, but the relief of tension on Flitwick's small features also said that Luke was right.

"I'm sure I would have done something similarly idiotic." He admitted. "Still, punishment has to be carried out. Think next time, Conyeri. Please."

"I will, Professor."

"Twenty points will be taken from Ravenclaw."

"Okay."

"And you'll do a month of after-school detentions."

"All right."

"In the Library."

"_What_?" Panic rose. "No, professor, please. I'll do all the detention you want, I promise, I'll clean your office for a year, I'll scrub bedpans for Madam Pomfrey-"

Flitwick shook his head firmly, his pudding-basic haircut whirling along with it. "It wouldn't be punishment if you do detention somewhere you don't mind. I understand that you are on Madam Pince's most wanted list of late-returning borrowers. Perhaps working for her will make you appreciate how difficult running a library is."

"Please?"

"No. My decision is final. And be glad I didn't take more points off. Conyeri, please don't do anything like this again. I count on you to win points for Ravenclaw, not lose them."

"Yes, Professor."

Flitwick gave an exaggerated huff and collapsed down into a chair. "Mr. Niall, if you could escort her upstairs and make sure she stays in her dormitory tonight. Getting to bed early tonight seems sensible, as you will be spending many nights working late from now on."

"Of course, Professor."

They stood up to leave. Flitwick rubbed his temples as Luke led Conny out. Children. Why were they so wonderful, and yet so destructive? Being a teacher wasn't easy. He was going to have a field day explaining this to the rest of the Professors.

-0-

The first day of the spring term started groggily. It was dark outside and the sun wouldn't rise until halfway through first lesson because the Scottish winter was beastly at the best of times. Morning was muggy and misty and Conny's head was pounding. She sat up in bed, checking the alarm clock on her bedside table. 6:22am. What a time to wake up.

Conny was not, strictly speaking, a morning person. She could stay up very late without feeling drowsy, but as soon as she did get to sleep it took Lucy doing a Cossack dance on her bed wearing steel-toed boots to wake her up. Still, when you're up, you're up, and there's nothing you can do about it. Conny slid out of bed and grabbed her uniform washbag, padding to the girls' showers. Once washed and dried and dressed, it was seven a.m. and only half an hour until breakfast would start. She opened the curtains and fluffed the cushions in the Common Room.

"Is that my second-favourite student?" A voice from across the room asked. Conny chuckled and looked up at the huge gilt portrait of Basil Fronsac, Ravenclaw student and old Hogwarts Headmaster.

"Second-favourite? I'm offended."

"I have had over a hundred years to have favourite students. You should be honoured to be the second."

"How was your Christmas, Basil?"

Basil sighed and pushed his glasses up his nose. "I suppose it was satisfactory. Percy Pratt from the grand staircase did come over far too often to read me his poetry, though."

"The guy who keeps wittering '_take time every day to rhyme what you say_'?"

"Yes." Basil made a face. "What about you?"

"You don't want to know." Conny shook her head. Then, something occurred to her. "What do you know about… about Lucy Ra's brothers?"

Basil's face changed rapidly from silly to sad. "Khai, Ali, Jahnen, Alexi. Between them, they have undermined the integrity of the House of Ravenclaw more than in the whole rest of its history combined."

"How come?"

"Take a seat. I suppose I ought to give you… an outline. But it is up to Lucelia to tell you what she wants, when she wants. That is her right."

"Okay." Conny sat down.

"Khai Ra came here in 1966. He was a wide-eyed first-year, smiling, vivacious, frightfully intelligent. He always had a mind for numbers- he still has the best Arithmancy grades in Hogwarts history. However… he became sad, in his later years. Shabbier. Lonely."

Conny couldn't imagine Khai, Lucy's oldest brother, lord of a crime empire, murderer, being sad or lonely.

Basil nodded sadly in silent accord. "Then, in his seventh year, he changed. Confident, outgoing, smooth… he was suddenly very popular. His younger brother by… three? Four? Years… something like that, my mind isn't what it used to be. Anyway, the thin one, Ali. He was popular and liked. So was the fat one, and Alexi- never without a girlfriend, Alexi Ra… He left just as Lucy arrived."

"But what did they do?"

"Oh, all sorts of things. The Ra brothers ran things at Hogwarts during that time. The way they went about doing it, though… was bad."

"Bad?"

"Not evil. They are not evil people by nature. But they are bad. Unscrupulous, exploitative, dishonest, but they did as much good as bad. They got things done. Whether it was arranging for a couple to get together who'd been dancing around it, or breaking a couple up because of a vengeful ex-boyfriend."

"You hear and see a lot, don't you?" Conny realized, looking around the Common Room. "All day and evening, you're listening to all the casual banter and the whispered conversations. You peer over peoples' shoulders and read secret notes."

Basil raised one, bushy eyebrow. "What else do you think I have to do all day?"

"True." She acquiesced, thinking about how tasty Hogwarts scrambled eggs were. "Basil, do you think… do you think that Lucy is like her brothers? You knew them, so you can compare."

"You know better than to ask that, Conyeri." Basil said, his eyes sad.

"Please?"

"You don't want to know my answer."

"Your lack of answer is an answer." Conny pointed out. "You think she _is_ like her brothers."

"So do you, Conyeri." Said Basil. "Lucy is smart, and popular, and manipulative. She has a legacy to live up to, and she… well, from what I know, she feels tied to, if not in hock to, her brothers."

"What does 'in hock' mean?"

"In debt to."

"Debt? Why would Lucy be in debt to them?"

"It is my understanding that her parents are deceased, and her brothers raise her. They are clever. They could easily have imbued her with a sense of debt or dependency. Family ties are not easily broken. Blood is thicker than water."

Conny nodded, remembering the phrase from somewhere. A couple of giggling sixth-year girls emerged from the girls' dressing room yawning, and Conny knew that her time talking privately to Basil was up. She recognized one of them… from a party celebrating Orville Kinch's unfortunate catch, a quidditch game between Hufflepuff and Gryffindor that was sure to go down in history as the most awkward snitch catch ever. Ravenclaw seemed never short of parties to celebrate any event. Anyway, this girl had come into the dressing room when Conny had been browsing _Consumer's Guide to Wizarding Wares _for a birthday present for Lucy. She'd been downing firewhisky and something else illegal.

Conny wondered if the stuff she'd had came from Alexi, who'd left the previous year. Wondered what it was.

"Well, good morning, Conny DeH." She said. Conny racked her brains for her name. Was it… Charlotte? No, Charlotte Stevenson was blonde. Er… Chloe? No, the one next to her was Chloe.

"Prudence!" The name came to her head. She'd turned her boyfriend into a baboon last year! That was how she remembered, Flitwick had shouted at her for it!

"Call me Pru. My reputation goes before me." She grinned. "What gets you up so early?"

"Oh, just, glad to be back at school."

Pru snorted. "You're happy to be back at school?"

"I like school. I like lessons."

"Ah, I forget, you're a whizz amongst whizzes." Pru gave her trademark wide grin. "My little sister is in the third-year Transfig class you take. Say's you're a demon."

"Who's your sister?"

"Probably the one snoring in the corner or making out with Jeremy Parker at the back of the class. We're very alike."

Chloe snorted beside her and nodded profusely. They bumped shoulders in camaraderie. "Well," Pru said quickly, "Me and Chloe are going… somewhere."

"But breakfast won't start for another twenty minutes."

"We're going for a walk."

"A walk?"

"Yeah. When did that become illegal, kid?"

"It isn't. It's just very obvious that you're obfuscating."

"Obfa-what?"

"Deliberately being vague."

"You know long words for a twelve-year-old."

"Thirteen. And you said it, I'm a whizz amongst whizzes." Conny smirked. Outwitting someone older felt good, especially someone who thought she was a little child like Pru did. The older girl gave her a half-hearted smile.

"Indeed you are. Well, we're going to meet up with our boyfriends in an abandoned classroom for some heavy petting. Is that clear enough for you?"

Conny blushed the colour of a Gryffindor tie. "Y-yes."

"Very good." Pru, back on top, tousled Conny's hair condescendingly. "Have a good morning, Whizz."

The two girls sauntered out. Conny let out a breath. Rats! She'd been so close to superiority, only to have it snatched from her open palm! And now she was stuck with the image in her head of Pru and her boyfriend, Gary "Duke" Shadden, Slytherin keeper and dangerous, broody, heavily muscled bad-boy. That led her to think about Az…

No. This was absolutely not the time to worry about that. And besides, her mum was already starting to drop hints, most of which indicated that she had to wait until she was thirty to even think about boys. Conny's mum taught PSHE to muggle children, so when it came to dating and social life, she knew what she was talking about. Az was older, too, two years older, and he was in Slytherin, and a seeker… but he was a poet, too, and a really, really nice boy. In Conny's imagination, he was also a very good kisser.

"Boo!"

Conny jumped a foot in the air and swore loudly and colourfully. Lucy burst into guffaws behind her, clutching her stomach.

"Don't sneak up on me!" Conny yelled, angry, her hands shaking. "Circe's knickers, I nearly had a heart attack!"

"You were so spaced, I could have drawn a moustache on your face and you wouldn't have betted an eyelid. You had this granny face you get when you think about things too hard, like you're trying to take a-"

"Crass as usual, Lucy." Ralphus sneered from somewhere behind them. Conny froze, her muscles going taut. She was lucky that people were beginning to pour out of their dorms, yawning and trying to tame bed-hair, else Ralphus would probably curse her harder than she'd jinxed him.

Usually that was Lucy's cue to stand toe-to-toe with Ralphus and sneer right back, but this time… this time Lucy's reaction was different. With a cocked hip and a wide smile, she turned to Ralphus with one eyebrow raised and a subtle… something.

Oh gods. Lucy was planning to… no. No. The one thing that Ralphus wouldn't think of.

"Morning, Ralph." She smiled. "I thought I smelled the pungent grease in your hair approaching."

As planned, he had to pause open-mouthed. Lucy became difficult to deal with, so he swung very quickly to Conny.

"I hear you'll be working for Pince every night for a month, DeH." He sniggered. "I don't think you should have to do that."

"You don't?" Conny asked, surprised. Perhaps the Christmas spirit had turned him into a better person?

"Nah. That whirlwind jinx was so weak, it only really deserves a week."

"Tell that to the hundred people who saw you fly along the Ravenclaw table." No, people never change.

"Still. You know that Pince and Filch go at it like Hufflepuffs in heat, right? Bet you'll be dusting the section on Romanian Herbologists, and you'll heart these grunts- uh, uh- oh! From the Romance section a shelf over."

"You're sick, Ralphus."

"Maybe they'll ask you to join in."

"I find that suggestion as disgusting as it is inappropriate." She replied, shuddering. "Go away, worry somebody else."

"The day is young, I've got plenty of bother to dispense." Ralphus cracked his knuckles, which looked ridiculous because he was scrawny. Of his cronies, Gil was the biggest and bulkiest, but he has wore glasses and had his nose in books a lot, so he wasn't much of a threat. The scariest was probably Feol, who was tall and black, but very lanky. Though for some inexplicable reason, Ralphus still commanded their respect. It wasn't that he was smarter- he was just… it felt like you should defer to him. He was very similar to Lucy in that way.

"You can dispense to me any time, Ralph." Lucy winked, hooking her arm in Conny's. "Let's get to breakfast, Conny."

Without giving Conny much chance to say anything, Lucy whisked her off out of the Ravenclaw Common Room. They slid down the cold stone slide hidden behind the tapestry of an uncomfortable-looking witch being burned at the stake to the third floor, then navigated the thoroughfare of moving staircases down to the Great Hall. It was sparsely populated, but students were beginning to trickle through from their houses, grumbling and yawning comically.

Conny had what could only be called a decent day. First period she had third-year Transfiguration, in which Professor McGonagall taught them how to turn cacti into colanders, followed by an agonizing hour of Arithmancy, after which she lugged herself to Defense Against the Dark Arts. Professor Atremidus seemed even older and frailer than they'd remembered, and she had to take the whole lesson on common European magical diseases from her cushy armchair behind her desk. Conny was so busy scribbling down notes like 'German shrinking disease, first reported C.15' and 'Boudicca- victim of the Affliction of angst' that she nearly didn't notice that Atremidus kept stealing looks at Lucy. Why was that? They didn't like each other, certainly, ever since Lucy had been particularly audacious in their first lesson together, but… Atremidus seemed worried for Lucy. Was she thinking about what she'd told Lucy? That Lucy and He Who Must Not Be Named were very similar?

After double DADA, Conny ate a healthy portion of vegetable lasagna and felt impending doom settle somewhere between her eyebrows. Jon wasn't talking to her, and that was bad enough, but evening was fast approaching and she would be totally at Madam Pince's mercy. She kicked herself for forgetting to return all those books on time. It wasn't her fault- they either got lost in her mess of a dorm, or they were so interesting that they needed extra time to read, or Professor McGonagall kept taking out advanced Transfiguration books for her and she forgot to read the ones she took out from the library. Pince hated her. Not in the casual, understandable way that Ralphus hated Lucy or Professor Snape hated life, but something like a deep, gloaming abhorrence that seemed to bite through to her very soul. Conny just knew that given an opportunity, oh, say, just the two of them in the library alone in the evening, Pince would smother her to death with a copy of _Stylish Slaughter: 101 simple ways to murder your enemies. _It was all going terribly wrong.

"Psst." Lucy prodded her. Conny snapped out of her brooding. They were lolling around in Charms while the Hufflepuffs tried their very hardest to come to grips with lumos duo. Flitwick let them do whatever they wanted; it wasn't like Conny or Lucy needed much teaching anyway.

"What?"

Lucy handed her a note. She opened it and immediately recognized Jon's curiously loopy handwriting.

_I'm sorry I stormed out. Heard you got lots of detention. Ralphus is a pig. Thank you for jinxing him._

She smiled and scribbled a note back.

_I'm sorry I said that. Your mum is awesome. I didn't mean to offend you. Detention every night for a month with Pince, yuck._

She received one back from him shortly.

_I'm still angry. You have to make it up to me._

Conny frowned over at him. Jon was so not the type to get comeuppance, especially through manipulation.

"Did you put him up to this, Lucy?" Conny hissed. It was just the type of thing Lucy would do.

"Maybe." She shrugged. "Hey, you wanted to get back in Jon's good books and he needs… whatever it is he wants."

"Hmm." Conny scribbled Jon something, ducking just enough to avoid Daisy Sorbes stumbling around, arms akimbo, shrieking that Corfax had blinded her.

_What?_

Jon gave her a cheeky grin that he seldom wore. Uh oh.

_You know Lucie pickpockets everyone __conser__ constantly. Well, she found a quill in your pocket. It reads thoughts._

Conny looked at him across the room. He was waving the tiny, speckled, brown and red quill that her Dad had sent her last year. Double uh oh.

_And? _She scribbled, fearing the worst.

He twirled it between his fingers smugly. He took time and care over the next note, his handwriting even curlier and elaborate than it was usually. He'd even included a crude doodle.

_You spend a lot of time thinking about Az Spooks. You should kiss him, like you want. That's what you have to do._

"WHAT?" She shrieked as she parsed the last line. Flitwick jumped into the air and tottered off the pile of books he had to stand on to teach. The Hufflepuffs actually stopped burning each other's eyes out for a second to look around. It wasn't often that the Ravenclaws had a kerfuffle in a lesson.

Conny went red and hid the note as Flitwick put his glasses back on and blew his moustache out of his teeth. He gave her a look- the look that said 'you're pushing it', and concentrated on preventing Ollie Day and Ash Wilkins from making each other's noses turn to mashed potato.

"Jon, you're _mad_."

"Non," he whispered in reply, a glint in his eye. "Je suis… foxy."

Lucy snorted into her textbook. "Jon just said he was _foxy_."

"Zat ees the right word, hm?"

"No, Jon, that is _so_ not the right word. Get a new thesaurus."

"What I think you mean is that you're devious." Conny pointed out, working through all the synonyms of foxy in her head. "Foxy implies something more… sexy."

"Unless you think you're sexy as well, Jon?" Lucy giggled, tickling him under the chin with her quill.

"Gerroff." Jon mumbled, prodding her away. Some way away, the bell chimed for the end of the lesson.

"Yes!" Lucy stood up so fast that it was as though her books had packed themselves. "The end of the day. Damn, I'm already bored of school."

"You're secretly very glad to be back." Conny pointed out, shouldering her bag as they left the Charms classroom. The hallways were packed with students jostling on the way to dinner. Bags and piles of books were being shoved in cubbies, next to statues, with some even being punted amusingly through ghosts. One passed through the Fat Friar's large stomach, and he guffawed loudly and applauded the Gryffindor who'd done it with a freezing pat on the shoulder.

"It's mad." Conny complained, being squeezed and shoved by larger students.

"Everyone wants to get to dinner, innit?" Lucy slipped between the legs of a freakishly tall Slytherin seventh-year in front. "I think it's fish and chips."

They sped up and, after chucking their bags in the cubby in the statue of Klickwurth McTiff in the Entrance Hall, took their seats on a very packed Ravenclaw table.

"You'd think that the table would be able to hold everyone." Lucy remarked, spearing haddock on her fork thoughtfully. "Usually at least some people don't turn up. It's nearly impossible to diet when you eat Hogwarts meals."

"Zey _are_ awfully 'eavy." Jon agreed, in the act of making a scale model of the castle out of his mushy peas.

Once they'd munched their way through dinner, Conny said goodbye to Lucy and Jon. They went upstairs to the Common Room to get some work done. Conny instead trudged into the Library. A few older students were working there, but younger students generally avoided it. The heady combination of homework and Madam Pince was all the deterrent you generally needed. And besides, there wasn't much you couldn't get from a textbook until around your O.W.L.s anyway.

"There you are." Pince appeared from nowhere, sliding across violently into Conny's field of vision on a sliding ladder used to put books on the top shelf. "Follow me."

Conny dutifully trailed behind Madam Pince until they came to a curtain of purple velvet. Behind it was a small room with a hob and kettle, several stubby candles and walls full of cupboards.

"This is where the supplies are kept. Anything removed from here must be returned and must not leave the Library."

"Right."

Pince pointed to one cupboard. Conny knelt to open it and found it full of cleaning supplies. With relish, Pince pointed to a toothbrush and a large bottle of _Dust-be-Gone_, which had on it in shimmering jade script the tag-line '_For wood, stone, tapestries, linen, wool, silk, dragonhide, iguanaskin, most common household moulds & fungi, grass, ignatious AND sedimentary rock, sheep…_

There was no dust on any surface that seemed to be able to contend with _Dust-be-Gone._

"You will begin at A. If you have that section done by the end of this evening, you may move on to B tomorrow. I expect you to have scoured the alphabet free of dust by the end of your tenure."

Great. Just great.

"And Miss DeHayersae," Pince warned her, "If I see one molecule of your body stray into the Restricted Section, you will do detention here for the rest of your time at Hogwarts."

Conny gulped. "Yessir."

"Well, what are you doing standing there! The longer you dawdle, the later you'll have to work!"

Conny hurried out, brushing past Pince in the doorway. She smelled of cushions that were never aired, or the mildew in that bit of skirting behind the lavatory that you could never quite scour away. It rankled in her nostrils and Conny hurried away.

She alighted at the very first bookshelf, looking up at the large, gilt 'A' hanging above it.

_Aaron Abolensky's Guide to the mating habits of Armenian Aardvarks. _Conny looked at the first title and groaned. This was going to take a while. She dipped the toothbrush in _Dust-be-Gone _and set to work.

Over the next month, Conny got through forty-seven toothbrushes and three canisters of _Dust-be-Gone_. It took her three days to finish the A section, and as she had to do it manually, Pince was always swooshing in and out of sight of her, sometimes with books, other times merely slinking past to check that she didn't have her wand out. The first time, she'd caught Conny trying to cast _evanesco _on the shelf containing the works of Adalbert Waffling and shrieked so quietly it must have been a verbal miracle that she heard every single whispered threat so clearly. From then on, she'd had to hand her wand in every time she came into the Library. She imagined it was Pince's dearest wish to secretly snap it and be rid of her altogether.

Once she got the hang of it- how to remove some books, clean, then replace them on a sort of rolling schedule, the nooks and crannies that Pince cursed her for missing, how exactly it was that so much dust accrued in the oddest of places. From then on, she did indeed breeze through a letter a night, sometimes staying very late to finish them. She found that it wasn't so excruciatingly dull if you brought a talking book with you, as long as you asked it nicely to speak very quietly and to shut up when Pince was coming. She'd already been read several very interesting issues of Transfiguration Today, including an editorial by McGonagall herself, dating from 1962. Interestingly the copy read it out in her voice, even pausing and commenting on how distasteful it found the fact that Conny didn't have her shirt tucked in.

It turned out, however, that she finished cleaning and set the very last book in the Library, _Zachary Zapp's Famous Warlocks of Poland_, down three days before her detention was due finished.

"I'm done, Madam Pince." She announced, toothbrush and _Dust-be-Gone _in hand, a weary smile on her face.

"Done?" Pince asked in her trademark furious whisper as she pulled lint out of a crease in the spine of a copy of _Demonic Dominicans: Dark Magicians who blighted the Caribbean_. "How can you be done?"

"I finished. A through to zed. I'm done."

"Are you sure?"

"Absolutely."

"Well," Pince carefully set _Demonic Dominicans _down and tensed, like a solider doing drill. "I shall go an inspect your work. If I find a single speck of dust on my shelves, I shall wipe that vapid smirk off your face."

She stormed off (very quietly), giving Conny time to return her cleaning supplies to the cupboard and put her clean robes back on. By the time Pince got back, looking sour, she was a picture of respectability. Judging by the level of displeasure on Pince's face, Conny guessed she'd won.

"Your work is satisfactory." Pince admitted, stroking _Demonic Dominicans _irritably. "But your detention is not yet complete."

"But I cleaned the whole Library!"

"Not the whole library." Pince mused, her eyes flickering towards the Restricted Section. "I suppose… if it were just cleaning."

"The Restricted section?"

"Yes." Her lips turned downwards. "But open any of the books in there and I will have you clean the girls' lavatories instead of the Library. Compared to Argus Filch, I am_ very_ lenient."

Conny blanched at the thought. She hadn't much minded cleaning the Library- it was warm and well-lit and although Pince did breathe down her neck like a circling vulture, Filch was known to do much worse. Olivia Teppit had run into the Ravenclaw Common Room crying and red-faced to reveal that Snape had taken twenty points off Ravenclaw for forgetting her ingredients. When she'd pointed out that she was too poor to afford them, Snape had given her detention with Filch. He'd hung her by her ankles from the ceiling of the coldest, darkest dungeon for twenty minutes. Git.

"Return here tomorrow after supper." Pince dismissed her. Conny, weary and overwrought, trudged up to Ravenclaw Tower. Not even prefects patrolling the corridors bothered her. They knew well that poor Conny DeH was in detention with Madam Pince for a month.

The Common Room was beginning to empty when she arrived, yawning students stumbling into bed. The craziest of them were still up and working, pale faces hidden behind towers of books and scrunched up parchment, only recognizable by the swish of their quills above the mess. Luke and Ally were snuggling on an oversized armchair; Pru was making eyes at Boris Malasten across the room, Lucy was lounging on the thick carpet by one of the fireplaces, pretending to do her Transfiguration homework.

"Hey." Conny greeted her. Lucy stretched like a cat and made googly eyes up at her.

"Can you help me with this… Law of Transmaterial Fusion crap?"

"I just spend three hours cleaning shelves with a toothbrush, you clod."

"And?"

"I'm more tired than Corfax after a flight of stairs." She sank into the carpet, wondering what homework she had to do. "Ugh, I'm so knackered. I need to go to bed."

"But this is due tomorrow!"

"Do your own homework, Lucy, you're smart enough."

"But I'm lazy!" Lucy complained, hitting her head against her textbook. "Hey, a birdie told me that the Slytherin team are practicing this Saturday afternoon. Maybe you can get in a little love-time with Spooky."

"Don't call him that."

"I can call him whatever I want," Lucy giggled, "I already call Jon Foxy."

"Foxy? To his face?"

"To his very red face, yep." Lucy said. "Hey, what's the difference between a prosech and a parsec?"

"One is physical, the other magical." Said Conny, rummaging through her bag. The fire was all warm; the stars on the ceiling were twinkling, ad her eyelids were drooping. "Prosechs measures ethereal distance, parsecs is a unit of astronomical distance equal to about… er…"

"Here it is-" Lucy was scanning her textbook, "Three and a quarter light years."

"Oh gods, we're not back to light years again." Conny held her head in her hands. "Jon won't say anything to me until I promise him I'll go and meet Az."

"Then just do it. Unless you don't want to make amends with Foxy."

"I do! I just… I don't want to kiss Az, is all." Conny complained, exasperatedly taking out a piece of parchment and scribbling the answers to Lucy's homework.

"You're lying. I read those notes I passed to you. You fancy him."

"Don't!"

"Do. So do. I've seen you two together, during your little quidditch practice lovefests."

"They are not love-fests! Az is teaching my to play!"

"I though Luke was going to teach you to play." Lucy pointed out. "Could it be that you prefer to learn from Az because he's hot, smart and available?"

"No." Conny irritably blotted the number sixty-eight she was writing. "Just lay off, okay?"

Lucy giggled and nodded, giving her the look. "Whatever. So, any plans for Valentine's? I hear Pru and Chloe are doing a speed-dating sesh for the whole House."

"What?" Conny smudged the answers again. "Why?"

"Because they're… them." Lucy looked over to where Pru was now in Boris's lap, stroking his fuzz of hair and mewling. "Ugh, it's gross."

"Too right." Conny finally finished the homework and handed it over to Lucy. "I'm going to bed."

"I'll be up in a min."

"Okay." She grabbed her bag and picked her way across the Common Room and up through the Dressing Room to the Girls' Dormitories. Her four-poster and the area around it were now so messy that the house-elves refused to tidy it up, which was saying something. Wearily, she undressed, donned her pyjamas and made some perfunctory effort to nudge the papers scattered about the floor into a slightly more organised heap. This, however, was futile, and she soon succumbed to the welcoming lull of sleep, snug under her deep blue covers as the night fell outside. A light smattering of raindrops began to plink against the stone mullioned windows of the Tower as Lucy, copied homework in tow, joined Conny in the dormitory. Making sure that she was asleep (the snoring and murmuring as the biggest clue), Lucy pulled out a roll of parchment and set to writing.

_Cell Forty-Seven, Azkaban Prison, North Sea_

"Dunt take thu catrplar." Conny mumbled as Lucy's favourite peacock-feather quill scratched loudly against the raspy parchment.

"You're weird, Conny." Lucy mused before starting writing.

_Dear Khai,_

_I've decided after thinking about it that I'm absolutely speechless with anger at you. So speechless that I'm writing you another letter. Not that I've spoken to you in five years anyway, but you get the point. Anyway, you didn't send me an owl for Christmas, which is crap, but you also nearly got me killed. Do you feel good about that? You know Alexi does whatever you say. I know you don't like Conny, or at least don't like her enough to send a nasty, sneaky way of killing her, but that was totally uncalled for._

_As __atoenme __atonement, I want an owl. I nice one. And I'm not using it for your business. I don't want anything to do with it. I like Conny and school and my friends and I think that your business is horrible. So I won't work for you. Not now, not ever._

_But I still want an owl please. And I'm fully recovered, also, so don't worry._

_Lots of love, - actually, not love, because you're a beastly, beastly man,_

_Lucy._

Satisfied, Lucy tucked the letter into her copy of Diseases of the Dark: The Illness of Iniquity. Finally, she thought, lying down to sleep, she'd get that off her shoulders.


	18. Chapter 17

Chapter Seventeen: Az Spooks Catches the Snitch (ish)

That night, Conny reported to the Library, yawning and shivering. Her fall in the mud had given her the most gruesome of all colds, and she was dead tired from having stayed up so long. She tiredly set to cleaning the last part of the restricted section, and was standing on a book about magical mutilation, which was trying to dismember her when she noticed something around the corner.

It was a table, set apart from the shelves at the end of an aisle, upon which was a huge book. Huger than huge. It was open just past the middle, though each page was the size of four normal ones, and it must have been at least three foot thick if you closed it.

And the best thing was that it was just open on the table. She wouldn't be disobeying Pince if she read it, because she hadn't taken it off the shelf at all! Forcing the murderous book back into its place, she checked that Pince wasn't there and approached the table.

Hang on. She saw lists of names. The newer ones she recognized- standing out because of the darkness of the ink. Everybody on this page had names beginning with D. She found herself, Conyeri Catherine DeHayersae, next to her father, David Bartholomew DeHayersae. Their names were in a margin, after which there was a huge amount of writing almost too tiny to read. Her dad had lots more written about him than she did; his house, sex, subjects, O.W.L. grades, N.E. , his career, all of it was there. Even their home address was squashed into the far side.

She was almost about to eagerly flip to the 'R' section to find out about Lucy's brothers when she spotted a curious name half a page further up from hers. In fact, she wouldn't have spotted it at all, if it hadn't have been for the fact that Charlie had asked her that question this morning.

Caradoc Dearborn.

Conny wouldn't even have seen it had he not had the first name of an Arthurian knight; and in addition, that surname, so alphabetically close her hers, she'd seen before. Where, though?

Hang on. Conny's near-perfect memory for transfiguration-based knowledge kicked in… except she hadn't found that article about some Ukrainian wizard improving the vanishing technique first, had she? She'd found that copy of the daily prophet from 2 years ago, with the missing persons… Mark Arrit's mum, and the man with only one friend looking for him… C. Dearborn.

C. Dearborn had disappeared; that was odd, just after You Know Who had fallen from power, and he had been a Hogwarts student. She looked at his information. Hufflepuff, N.E.W.T.s in Arithmancy, Astronomy (yuck), Muggle Studies and DADA. Extra-curricular involvement in the Gobstones and Art clubs. Apparently he'd even done a couple of paintings that had been hung around the castle.

Conny suddenly felt very sad. According to the dates, he'd only have been in his mid-twenties when he disappeared. Conny hoped that there was never another war; she didn't like the idea of any young, talented people like Caradoc Dearborn being so… callously removed from the world.

Awfully sad, she finished the last of the cleaning quickly, without enjoyment, death on her mind. She knew that other people had lost more than her in the war: brothers, fathers, sisters, and mothers. Friends. She'd only had to attend three funerals, which was many fewer than others. As she put the last book back in its place, she felt strangely purposeless. And very tired. When she returned to Pince, she even received what could have been a sympathetic smile, though perhaps Pince had just smelled something unpleasant and grimaced; it was difficult to tell.

"Well, I suppose you're finished." Pince said, and Conny thought she heard a hint of satisfaction in her voice.

"Can I go?"

"Of course." Said Pince, "Oh, wait a minute, would you? I have something for you."

Pince rummaged in a drawer of her desk. Conny furrowed her brows, perplexed. Pince, give her a present? It was so out of character that Conny felt shaken. Then again, maybe she'd changed Pince's papery heart, maybe Pince wanted to repay her for her hard work!

"Here is a list of all the books you still have to return."

Conny groaned. Of course.

-0-

"AND WELCOME TO THE FIRST HOGWARTS QUIDDITCH MATCH OF 1984!" David James bellowed into his megaphone. "Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, and Professor Snape-"

McGonagall grunted loudly at him, but David just giggled and went on, "Anyway, you're in for a treat! We have today for you all, the vicious, lethal Quidditch machine that is… THE SLYTHERIN TEAM!"

The Slytherins exploded out of their takeoff tower, a sleek jet of silver and green, looping around the pitch. Az zoomed just slow enough to wink at Conny, who was today down in the Ravenclaw stands (there had been no space in the tower), brandishing one half of a large banner that read 'IT IS A LOGICAL INEVITABILITY THAT RAVENCLAW WILL WIN!'. A fourth-year she didn't know was holding the other pole, since it was a rather long but very Ravenclaw slogan.

Lucy elbowed her in the ribs and wiggled an eyebrow.

The raucous cries and cheers of the mass of Slytherin supporters across the pitch died down just enough for David to continue, "Facing them is the razor-sharp intellect and tactical genius of… THE RAVENCLAW TEAM!"

Conny's eardrums exploded as the Ravenclaws around her shouted and whooped so loud that the stand shook. For quiet, often bookish people… they could make a great deal of noise. From the takeoff tower decked out in blue and bronze, the Ravenclaws zoomed onto the pitch in an arrowhead formation, Luke heading it up. He waved at the Ravenclaws, who cheered him on.

"This is what they mean by conflict of interest." Lucy observed as the teams arranged themselves in a circle around Madam Hooch. Luke and Methalius Rosier, the Slytherin Captain, shook hands with grins on their faces. Quidditch matches between Ravenclaw and Slytherin were not straight-out hate games that occurred between the latter and Gryffindor. They had a healthy rivalry and always tried to one-up each other in relatively antipathy-free but fiercely competitive play. This match would be hard-fought and bloody.

"Good Quidditch, gentlemen, ladies." Hooch said.

A streak of gold fired into the air.

"That's the snitch off!" David James exclaimed. "And there's the bludgers! Looking vicious as ever today… and the quaffle has been thrown!"

Six chasers converged on the quaffle at once.

"It's Ravenclaw's Captain Luke Niall in possession! Our head boy ducks that nasty bludger- hit by Smogton, for a fourth year he's built like a troll, no offence meant!" David yelled as Luke furiously sped up the pitch, the quaffle under his arm.

Lucy leant over and said quietly, "If you're not interested in him any more, can I have Luke?"

"No! I'm still holding out on him."

"Tch." Lucy sniffed, adding a "Go Ravenclaw!" for effect.

"Niall to Fiago- who is incidentally not my girlfriend, to put those rumours to rest, I'm a single man-" McGonagall here gave him the sternest look she could muster without smiling at Snape's aghast expression. "Anyway, Fiago's got the quaffle, passes to Greenbrook, a new addition this year, looking a little queasy if you ask me, and Greenbrook fumbles! Oh gods, the quaffle is falling… Niall makes a quick save and scoops it up! It's Niall into the scoring zone, Duke Shadden ready for him… he's gone for a post-feint… Shadden lunges… but Ravenclaw scores!"

Conny and Lucy roared and whooped along with the mob in blue as Luke fist pumped triumphantly. Muttering, Duke Shadden scooped the quaffle back up and chucked it to Alvin Haley.

"Slytherin in possession, Haley just weaving through the Ravenclaw defense, passes Greenbrook, oh- phew, that bludger nearly took his head off, excellent hit from Boris Malasten… Haley tries to pass Fiago but she grabs the quaffle from between his legs! Excellent move, lucky thing she only got the quaffle… indeed Haley looks winded if you know what I mean; Fiago to Niall, Niall ducks a rather illegal-looking punch from Slytherin Captain Rosier… he's looking pissed."

Luke gave Rosier the finger as he sped away from him towards the goal where Shadden was waiting, his eyes narrowed and a vein popping out on his forehead. Conny understood the concentration it took to be keeper, the split-second decision you had to make, and the speed your reactions had to be. You also had to have perfect balance, much more so that any of the other players. Luke veered left and gripped the quaffle, looking for an opening, avoiding another bludger. He dived down to get out of reach of a joint arrowhead defensive maneuver from Haley and fifth-year McWilliams, lost them in a complex loop, his body warping from the force of changing direction, shooting back upwards, swerving back right to avoid Shadden's aggressive blocking, and quickly tapped the quaffle back behind him into the hoop that Shadden had just abandoned.

"And another spectacular goal for Niall!" David James shouted, the mob in blue exploding and several marriage proposals being screeched from the stands. After that, it seemed that Luke could not do wrong; He and Clara Fiago played a furious and fast-paced tag-team offense, one always just slipping away from being marked to catch the pass, and each goal became more spectacular than the last. The Slytherins glowered and upped the bludger-based effort of their strategy, successfully impacting Aren Moss the Ravenclaw keeper enough to break what Conny suspected were several of his ribs. Through all of it, Az and Spencer Holloway, the Ravenclaw seeker, fought a quiet but equally as dangerous battle over the search for the elusive golden snitch. Once or twice every ten minutes, one would make a dive just to shake the nerves of the other, but there was very little action of the snitch kind going on. Not that that was a problem, what with the main play having the whole school on the edge of their seats.

"So that's 70-0 to Ravenclaw, currently in possession, this has been a steamroll so far!" David said. On the pitch, however, Methalius was zooming around, muttering into the ears of his teammates, which was never good. Strategy from the Slytherins was bound to be deadly.

"Er- so it's Fiago in possession… wait, She's been blocked by McWilliams, she passes up to Niall, who careens left avoiding Haley, no choice but to pass to Greenbrook… Greenbrook goes for the straight on the left curve, but… OUCH! That must hurt! A bludger straight to the foot! Greenbrook drops the quaffle, picked up by a sly little run from Mickless, such a slip of a third-year you'd miss him if you blinked, Mickless to a triumphant-looking Haley, Niall tries to head Haley off… but no! Niall has to bear right to avoid Rosier's bludger, and with Moss off in the Hospital Wing, Haley has a clear shot at goal! Slytherin score!"

The green part of the stadium whooped and jeered, chants arising of 'Go back to the books, Greenbrook!' and similar lyrical triumphs. The game does not stop for anybody, so Ravenclaw were back with the quaffle again, but the Slytherins had it cracked. Block all passing routes other than that to Greenbrook, and then slam him up for the quaffle and make the open run to the empty goal. It was a perfect and deadly strategy, and soon the score was not so even. 70-110 to Slytherin spelled a tricky situation.

Then, when the players were all beginning to tire, the tiny specks that were the seekers exploded into action, apparently at the same time. Conny saw it- a tiny flicker of gold right down at the bottom of the pitch in the centre, inches above the grass. It was a mad catch to try! Az was speeding downwards in a straight dive, his usually floppy blonde hair streaming behind him, his green robes vertical. Holloway was level with him, the two jostling, arms outstretched…

Disaster struck. The quaffle had been punted into the centre, and its trajectory of falling was right next to the snitch. Two seekers, six chasers, and a beater for good measure all flew towards the ground centre, hands and limbs and colours all flapping behind them, about to collide…

WHAM!

"Holy shit!" David James shouted as nine players crunched together in a tangled, splintered heap on the grass. For once, McGonagall did not chastise him. The teachers were on their feet, peering down; Hooch was a mess. The pile of limbs and hair and quidditch robes moaned and twitched like it was one, fearsome organism. "Are they all right?"

"Evidently not, stupid boy." Snape hissed behind him, which was picked up by the megaphone. "I suppose I shall made some remedial concoctions. However I cannot promise that I have sufficient ingredients to make enough to… go around."

"Oh, you needn't worry; I have a cauldronful of tonic prepared just for this sort of bump!" Atremidus said cheerfully from under a frightening orange wooly hat. "A moment, is that boy…?"

They all turned around to see the pile stir. A blonde head poked out from under an unconscious Boris Malasten, followed by two arms. Az Spooks pulled himself atop the pile. He smiled, though there was a snitch-sized hole where several of his teeth had been. And held up in an obviously broken hand a tiny, golden ball.

"I don't believe it!" David gasped. "Az Spooks has caught the snitch… Slytherin win!"

Az gave them a thumbs up, spat out one of his teeth and promptly lost consciousness.

-0-

"Azinnus wishes to speak to you." Rissa said softly as she passed Conny in the great Hall that evening. The whole school was abuzz with talk of the quidditch match, complete with vivid re-enactments usually involving several teenaged boys piling on top of each other and squashing the bottom one. Rumour was going around that Kyle Smogton was selling Az's lost teeth as talismans to anyone who could pay.

"Huh?" Conny asked through a mouthful of dumplings.

"He wishes to see you. He is at the present time confined to the Hospital wing, and I was instructed to send for you."

"Right. Thanks, Rissa."

"It was my pleasure." She inclined her head slightly, leaving to join the Slytherins.

"If I'm ever rich enough, I want Rissa to be my butler." Conny said off-handedly, trying to wolf down her food so she could go see Az. Lucy didn't take that well, and she was looking almost wistfully after Rissa. Her mind seemed five years ago, when presumably Rissa had been different, a girl who had been even more wild and destructive than Lucy herself.

"Go see your boyfriend." Lucy dismissed her, prodding at her potatoes. "Go. We can meet up somewhere later; the rest of the house will be having a party anyway."

"A party?"

"Oh, you know Pru and that lot. A party if we win, a party if we lose, a party if a hag sneezes in Aberdeen."

"Right." Conny laughed quietly, setting her cutlery down and grabbing a bowl of pudding for Az (today treacle sponge with vanilla custard), since Madam Pomfrey only allowed patients who were on the brink of death anything sweet. She crossed the Entrance Hall and went into the Hospital Wing, where nearly the whole of the Slytherin and Ravenclaw Quidditch teams were laid out groaning upon hospital beds. The floor was so muddy that Conny nearly slipped over several times on her way to where Az was propped up in bed, his face contorted like he was trying to throw up.

"Hey," She said, giving him a perplexed look. "You look like you're trying to pass a puffskein."

"Fwanks." Az said snarkily, pointing to his mouth. Where his teeth had been knocked out in a snitch-shaped hole, new pearly whites were growing back slowly, their tips just visible protruding from his gums.

"I guess pudding is out of the question." Conny held up the treacle sponge. Az's mouth watered, though it might have been watering anyway because Madam Pomfrey had packed it full of cotton so Az didn't bite himself by accident and ruin his new teeth.

"Nu!" Az cried, tearing up at the sight of pudding. "Dju come justube cwul?"

"It's like trying to understand Jon when he's excited." Conny lamented. "I came because Rissa said you wanted to see me?"

"Oh, yeth." He nodded. "Dju see me rlun?"

"Rlun?"

"Yanno, cadusnith."

"I did see you catch the snitch. It was very impressive," she admitted, "But you're stupid, too."

"Sumthimes yagoddadee shthoopid tarlun."

"Yes, but sometimes you're too stupid, even if you do win. You're going to get yourself killed one of these days." Conny said.

"Ya thound lek my mum." He complained, and very quickly pulled all the cotton wool from his mouth. "Urgh. That's better. Listen, when we were in the changing rooms I heard the lot next door chatting. Apparently you tried out but didn't get into the Ravenclaw team."

"I… I did. But I'm not good enough by half."

"I want to play against you while I'm still here." Az affirmed. "So I think we should… er… I mean, how would you feel about practicing with me next weekend?"

"Oh." Said Conny, not expecting that. Generally she and Az just found each other on the pitch or he grabbed her in the Commons. He'd never so formally asked her before. "Er… sure."

"Great." He beamed, wincing as an incisor had a growth spurt. "How about Saturday morning, before any of the teams get there?"

"Okay. Saturday morning."

"Awesome." He then stuffed the cotton wool back into his mouth as Madam Pomfrey came towards them with an ominous tray of medicines and something called a Dentasprout, if its pot was any indication, which was an oddly squashy dark green bulb. It looked fairly innocent until it yawned, showing a row of razor-sharp teeth.

"Good evening, Mr. Spooks." She gave Conny a withering look. "Let me see your teeth."

Az's teeth were already sort of on display, since his mouth was packed with cotton wool anyway. Madam Pomfrey made a fuss of measuring his regrowing teeth with a fingernail-sized tape measure before expressing a sigh. "I'm afraid it'll be another dose of Dentasprout vomit, Mr. Spooks."

"Grhh!" Az protested, but Pomfrey was already prodding the Dentasprout.

"Come on… that's it… who's a good plant?" She tickled the bulb under… what must have been its chin. It purred and snapped its teeth at her. "Come on, I haven't all day!"

The dentasprout wretched, shivered, and then threw up a sticky green liquid into Madam Pomfrey's waiting cup. Az made gagging noises of his own and shuddered looking at the vomit. "Oh, take that look off your face, Mr. Spooks; do you want teeth or not?"

"Frllibbit." Az replied snarkily as the cup of vomit had held out for him.

Pomfrey then noticed Conny. "What are you doing here?"

"Er… seeing my friend?"

"Well, you can very well see him when he's recovered. The last thing Mr. Spooks needs is a tiring distraction."

Conny was about to point out just where she could shove her 'tiring distraction' when Az gagged loudly on the dentasprout vomit and Pomfrey returned to fussing over him. She decided that it was probably best to leave now, so she made her way back up to the Ravenclaw tower instead. Lucy, Rebecca and Gil were in the Common Room drinking tea and trying to muddle through some History of Magic work.

"Hey, hey." Lucy greeted, "How's your boyfriend in a coma?"

"Funny." Conny said, plonking herself down on a chair. "He's okay, Pomfrey's regrowing his teeth."

"Let's hope she doesn't get it wrong, or you won't be kissing him any time soon." Rebecca remarked lightly before furiously crossing out something at Gil's advice.

Conny sighed. "Does _everybody_ know about this?"

"Yep."

"Great." Conny grabbed Lucy's roll of parchment. "Ugh, this isn't Binns's essay on Merlin's early contributions to the formation of the Warlocks' Council, is it?"

"It is."

"I haven't done it yet either, can I grab my stuff and join you lot?"

Rebecca shrugged noncommittally, and Lucy just sucked at the tip of her peacock-feather quill thoughtfully, which Conny took as a yes. After the round trip to the dorm, she settled down to actually do some work. The usual routine was that they'd all do their prep together, then when everybody had finished, Conny would spend a couple of hours on extra Transfiguration while the others played chess of gobstones, read Teen Witch Weekly or squabbled over Quidditch (especially when Jon was around).

"Right." She cracked her fingers and dipped her quill in Gil's pot of ink. "So, what exactly did Merlin do again?"

"Do none of you listen?" Gil Lockhart complained. Conny glanced over at his parchment - he'd already written a foot and a half – and scoffed.

"We would if Binns was even half as interesting as watching Lawrence clip his toenails." Lucy pointed out.

"And Gil, History of Magic is the only subject you can be on your high horse about," Rebecca said, scratching out a misspelling of 'Caledonensis' for about the fourth time, "Since it's you who copies us in every other class."

"It's hardly my fault that I have a very focused field of talent." He said with a flourish, his glasses slipping down his nose. "And it's sort of tit-for-tat, isn't it? I mean, where would you be without me in History of Magic?"

"Happier?" Lucy suggested.

A finger was raised at her. Then, Conny remembered something.

"Hey, Gil, do you know anything about Caradoc?"

"The Knight of the Round Table Caradoc?"

"Yes."

"Well, Caradoc and the serpent are mortal enemies." Gil explained, "His nickname was 'Short-Arm', because the wizard Elivares cursed a serpent to coil around his arm and sap the life and strength from it. He does eventually get it off, though, with help from his best friend Cador, who was the Duke of Cornwall. Well, and Cador's sister Guinier. Actually, it's Guinier who helps Caradoc get the serpent off… it's quite rude actually."

"What?"

"Well, Caradoc sits in the tub of vinegar, and Guinier in a tub of milk without… without her top on. The serpent leaps away from Caradoc towards Guinier's… her, er…"

"Her tits." Lucy explained, the textbook propped up on her knee. "But then Caradoc slices at the snake with his sword before it gets Guinier. Oh, but he cocks it up and slicers her nipple off."

"Seriously?"

"Yup."

"You know, these legends are kind of racy." Rebecca noted, putting a final flourish on her introductory paragraph. "Why do you want to know about Caradoc, Conny? We've not got an essay on Eliavres and ancient Dark Magic I've forgotten, have we?"

"No, nothing like that. Just, uh, came across the name."

Lucy gave her a look; the sort of look that meant that Lucy knew Conny was lying. She cleared her throat and looked over to Gil.

"Thanks, Gil. Let's get the essay done; I've got this mammoth amount of reading on the teapot to tortoise transfiguration."

-0-

The next Saturday dawned with the first clear, blue sky of spring. The air was clear, the sun white and warm, painting the castle in shimmering light. Conny's alarm clock woke her at half six in the morning. For the first time, she leapt out of bed, more awake than ever. In the four-poster next to Conny's, Lucy groaned and pulled her covers over her face to shield her from the glare, looking like a blue caterpillar with a fringe of black hair poking out of the top.

Conny dressed fussily, fishing some practical clothes out of her closet. Florie and Lottie's clothes from the Void were all lovely, but not made for the freezing wind and physical demands of the Quidditch pitch. She went with a snug navy polonecked jumper and some tracksuit trousers. Conny often thought that wizards were a bit old fashioned about their clothing choices. Synthetic muggle clothes did the job equally as well and tracksuit trousers were an amazing invention.

She zipped down through the castle, almost running across the great hall before realising that the doors were shut to the grounds. She changed tack and took a diversion around through the Owlery corridor. The Quidditch pitch was a good ten minutes' walk since she had to stop by the spare broom shed to pick out the least crappy log to fly on. Maybe she'd ask for a proper broom if she was going to take up flying properly.

Az was waiting on the pitch, dashing in his green stripy Slytherin Quidditch jersey, his Nimbus 1700 looking very fine next to her gnarled branch of a broom. The wind was ruffling his blonde hair and his cheeks were pink with the slight chill.

"G'morning." He greeted her, bowing slightly, a tad awkward.

Conny giggled as he blushed. "Good morning to you too. How're your teeth?"

"Much better," he smiled to show her, "And they're a lot whiter and straighter now- the dentasprout got rid of those little wavy bumps."

"What ones?"

"You know, the ridges on your teeth? You've got them on yours." He pointed to Conny's mouth. "Hey, have you got all your adult teeth?"

"Of course!" Conny replied, indignant, "I got my last adult tooth… two years ago? Ish?"

"That's cool. My older brother didn't get his last adult teeth until he was fifteen." Az grinned, and then added, "Of course, he keeps losing them when angry muggles punch him."

"Oh- that's right, your brother must have finished university by now."

"He's doing okay, yep. Says that being an Obliviator is like being… er, what d'you call those muggles who bust down doors holding killing sticks?"

"The Police, Az."

"Yes, the powlease. Anyway, he's interning on the Essex and Area Obliviation Unit, and he gets callouts five or six times a day. He says it's really exciting."

"That's cool." Conny nodded, twiddling her broom around.

"Gods, sorry, I've been rambling; shall we get into the air?"

"Thought you'd never ask." Conny grinned, mounting her broom. They kicked off in tandem, jumping into the air with gusto. Conny's curly brown hair streamed out behind her as they did a couple of laps. There was something uncomplicated about Quidditch; sometimes you didn't even have to talk, just do, just enjoy yourself without the need to talk. Az zoomed down to scoop up a tattered quaffle with swearwords scrawled all over it and a suspiciously goat-sized bite missing. They passed for a while, but soon they fell into the usual rhythm of Conny as keeper and Az shooting. Conny also threw golf balls for Az to catch, but he was so good that even when she bewitched they to zoom out of his reach he still got every single one. The Hufflepuff team interrupted them at ten, which was a shock because Conny lost all sense of time when she was flying. They didn't bother dismounting as they zipped off the pitch, laughing, and free-flew over the grounds. If they got caught, they'd be flayed alive by Hooch or Filch, but who cared? As long as they didn't go too high, lest they be seen by muggle bird-watchers or helicopters from the village of Caerdoughan or even worse nearby Dufftown, it was fine.

They ended up sitting on top of the Astronomy tower, where they had a view of half of Scotland because they day was so clear. You could even, if you squinted, make out Kilravock Castle in the distance.

"Awesome view."

"Isn't it?" Az grinned, his sandy hair all wild and windswept. "I had fun."

"Me too."

"You know, you're getting good at Quidditch, Conny. I think you should try out next year, definitely."

"Aw, thanks. I'm not that good, though. If anyone's a shoe in for the team, it's Lucy. Once Luke graduates, Boris or Kelley will be captain and they're not… well, you know Luke, he's got morals and he's Head Boy. So Lucy will be on the team in a flash. She probably won't even have to try out."

"Lucy is very good," Az agreed, "But let's not talk about Lucy. Let's talk about you."

"About me?"

"Yes. What subjects d'you want to take next year?"

Conny paused, watching the treetops of the Forbidden Forest wave in the breeze. "I hadn't though about it. Ancient Runes, definitely… um, and I thought maybe Muggle Studies?"

"Why on earth would you want to do Muggle Studies? Your mum is a muggle, right?" Az asked.

"Well, yes. But it's an easy O."

"That's no reason to take a subject. It looks like a doss on your university application, anyway."

"But I wouldn't know what else to take!" She complained.

"What about… Divination?" Az suggested, "Trelawney is a crazy boho and all, but it's better than Muggle Studies."

"No." Conny said, flatly. "Divination involves stars and Astronomy. Ixnay to the Ivinationday."

"Right. Then your only option is Care of Magical Creatures." Az said. "Hey, that's actually a great idea. It shows that you get out into the fresh air a little, too."

"Are you suggesting that I'm a recluse?"

"No." Az dodged her playful jab to the shoulder with a laugh. "I'm just saying that it's a break from the classroom and scratching quills and your inky little fingers."

"You mean it's getting mauled by wild crups and the like." She snorted.

"No! Trust me, it's great. You'd like it."

"Tch. We'll see."

Az fist-pumped, saying, "That's as good of a yes as I'll ever get out of you, isn't it?"

"Maybe."

"You're a right scalawag, you know?" Az said, ruffling his already-messy hair. "Are you going to the bwillif?"

"The whosit?"

"The BWLiF, you know, the British Wizarding Literature Festival. It's a mouthful so I just went with bwillif."

"Right." Conny gave him a look. "No, not this year. My Dad is working a lot of hours and he couldn't get the week off."

"That's a shame. I'll send you a postcard."

"To remind me of what I'm missing? You're cruel, Spooks."

He pulled a face and they continued chatting about life, the universe and everything really. There was no subject Az didn't take an interest in, from Unicorns to dishwashers. As Conny had suspected, he was very curious about muggles, and regretted not being able to take Muggle Studies at O.W.L. Well, his mates in Slytherin would have killed him for it, and for writing poetry, too, so Conny supposed it was excusable. She promised to show him how a washing machine worked and what the national Grid was when she had the time. He had a hard time wrapping his mind around space travel and rockets, too. They talked about the problems between America and the U.S.S.R that were going on at the moment.

"Sort of like a stalemate in chess." She'd explained it as.

"Muggle politics are very fanciful. Gosh, suppose Géderic and the French positioned some giant cannons to face England? That would be a similar thing to these newcular missayuls, no?"

"Only if we pointed some back but neither side fired them."

"Eesh." Az rubbed his temples. In the distance, the clock tower rang out for midday, sending a host of birds squawking away into the sky over the Black Lake. The squid was lazily catching giant cod that Rosie McAvery was levitating for him. So that was where all of the North Sea catch was going!

"Is that already lunch?" Conny asked as her stomach grumbled; she'd not had any breakfast. "We've been out hours!"

"So we have." Az got to his feet and offered her his hand to get up. Conny took it and was surprised at how calloused it was. "Hang on, I've got something prepared. Meet me in that little clearing with the standing stones, where the cloisters' path dwindles out."

Conny nodded, mounting her broom. Any boy of fourteen who could use the word 'dwindle' in the correct context so freely was a catch. Az whipped out of sight, so she flew discreetly down to the standing stones. Daffodils were blooming around the edge.

Az returned after about five minutes with a small wicker basket flopping around his arm as he skidded into his landing. Evidently the inside was bigger than the outside, because from it he pulled a large tartan picnic rug, a pitcher of pumpkin juice, and a platter of assorted picnic food. He'd even cut the crusts off the sandwiches.

"Wow… Az, you didn't have to do this!"

"It's nothing." He blushed, offering a baguette. "Seriously; I think that school food can get a bit heavy when you eat it every meal of every day for a couple of months. And the weather was nice; why shouldn't we have a picnic?"

"You present a sound argument." Conny replied.

"Here; try the breaded puffskeins."

It was the sweetest thing anybody had ever said to her.


	19. Chapter 18

Chapter Eighteen: Easter in Malachite Hill

Spring swung into action from that day, quite violently. Rebecca Dannat was practically dissolving from her hayfever and pollen allergies; jumpers turned into cardigans and then into t-shirts. Skirt lengths shortened suspiciously; top buttons magically undid themselves. Professor Snape was purportedly seen wearing dark grey instead of black, which was one of the signs of the apocalypse.

Conny allowed herself to forget anything to do with the painting or Lucy's murderous brothers, and found herself much better for it.

With the windows of the Ravenclaw Common Room open, a breeze seemed also to speed her on her way. She was aceing all of her subjects, since the whole bust boiler incident Polly and Anna were actually being quite friendly, Ralphus was staying out of the way… and she had Az.

She met up with Az often now: not too often, because she had lots to do, but still more than Lucy thought was acceptable. They went flying, or walking, or to some secluded dell or tower to look at the view. They'd taken to flying up to the Owlery tower, bringing a hamper of food, and using binoculars to spy on the people down below. The whole school seemed to be leaking out of the castle and onto the grounds in those last weeks of the spring term, determined to catch some sunlight before the weather remembered that they were in Scotland. Luke and Ally went for long, meandering walks holding hands and then slipped into a small copse of trees near the edge of the Black Lake, not returning for some forty-five minutes or longer sometimes. They must really like walking in the woods.

Boris Malasten and his friends used a different copse of trees to smoke during lunchtime and after-school, and Conny wondered why nobody had caught them yet. Rosie McAvery and Tilda Tirias, sometimes accompanied by other Gryffindors or the S's (two Hufflepuff girls, almost identical- Daisy Sorbes and Emma Shoack), and fished off the pier or did homework. There was minor drama when the giant squid dragged Mark Arrit screaming into the depths of the Lake, but he returned safe and sound in the end, swearing never to have kippers for breakfast again.

The last week of the Easter Term brought with it packing, laughing and groaning, not necessarily in that order. The packing was because Conny was going home, the laughing was at Lucy accidentally transfiguring her nose into a toad's leg, which hung off her face limply, slimy and green, until Professor McGonagall managed to get rid of it and give Lucy the correct nose. The groaning was at the amount of holiday work they were set.

"But, Professor-"

"I'm going to see the Cup quarter-final-"

"Got to visit my Granny in Stoke-on-Trent-"

"Please don't set so much!"

None of these seemed to work, and if anything seemed to egg Professor Snape on to set them not one but two ridiculously hard and viciously long essays on the use of Mandrake root and the Magical origin of the Black Plague. Atremidus, too, heaped work upon them, but handed out biscuits and squash and let them have the last DADA lesson of term outside on a sunny Thursday, demonstrating how common wildflowers such as those that grew all over the grounds could be combined to create a poison so potent that one drop would kill a herd of cattle. Cheery. When the class started shifting uncomfortably to move themselves further away from a cluster of daisies, she stopped talking about that and let people try and hex each other for a bit.

So it was when the time came to lug suitcases downstairs, console those who were staying for the holidays (mostly fifth- and seventh- years stressing about their exams) and to board the Hogwarts express.

"What're you doing this holiday, Luce?" Conny asked after opening another window - the Hogwarts express was getting muggy – and sitting back down. Their compartment was mercifully sparse on this journey, since most of their friends were one compartment over engaged in what sounded like a furious and eventful game of exploding snap.

"Oh, er… not sure, really."

"What do you mean, not sure?"

"Well, I thought I might get on the muggle underground and make my way to Diagon Alley. The Leaky Cauldron has some cheap rooms up."

Conny made an appalled face. "You're not seriously staying by yourself?"

"I haven't really anywhere to go. Aunt Fats won't take me again after what happened at Christmas. Lex is in Germany. Ali's baby is due any time soon… Jahnen's at the Ritz playing with muggle politics in some sort of bill being passed that is going to benefit him."

"So you don't have… anywhere?"

"Not really."

"Then come stay at mine."

"I couldn't possibly impose like that; I'm always around at yours and you don't even have a stable address for me." Luc argued.

"Don't be stupid." Conny said. "Actually… hang on. I've got somewhere you can stay."

"Where?"

Conny grinned. "Don't worry. Come on the tube with me and my folks, it's near where I live. You'll like it."

"Serious?"

"As a pop quiz."

"Thanks, then. You're a life-saver."

"I'd disagree, but we do a fine amount of life-saving between us." Conny said. "Jon, what're you up to? Going back to see Hilda?"

"Non." He huffed. "Her dad got moved to Toulouse. Toulouse! Zat is a stupeed place to be moved to."

"Aw; that's sad. Maybe she could be your long-distance girlfriend?"

"Shut up."

"Someone's grouchy."

"I am not grouchy."

"Jon, next to the word 'grouchy' in Conny's seven-hundred foot thick dictionary is a full-page picture of you." Lucy teased. Jon went pink and swore at her under his breath.

"I feel left out now," Conny complained, "Everyone can swear in a different language and not have anyone else understand them but me. Lucy's got Arabic, Jon's got French… I'm going to have to learn Cantonese or something."

"That would be wise." Lucy said, "Considering that my brother says that he heard a prophecy that the Chinese will rule the world in forty years."

"You'd be right if the Chinese spoke Cantonese, but unfortunately only people from Hong Kong speak it." Said Conny.

"Rats. One of these days I'll get you."

"Bring it on, Ra." She challenged, pushing her sleeves up as if to start a fight. Lucy just flipped her the finger and went back to pressing Jon.

"So what will you do for the holidays, then, Jon?"

"Oh, cette et ces."

"Maybe you could come visit. Is this place you have for me big enough, Con?"

Conny considered it. "If Jon doesn't mind sleeping on the sofa, yes."

"Brilliant. Then we'll all come slum it in Conny's patch of London!"

"I love how you decided that without consulting me, Luce."

"I know you do."

"Go get me some fudge from the trolley."

Lucy made a face and stood up, her pocketful of money jangling. Lucy's allowance was probably equal to Conny's mum's earnings, which was depressing. She came back from the trolley, which was held up at the next-door compartment by Corfax, with Conny's favourite Curiously Tasty Fudge, a liqourice wand for Jon and an armful of pumpkin pasties for herself. Lucy was one of those people who could eat whatever they liked and stay on the dangerous side of skinny. Conny knew that once Lucy got a bit older, she'd be stunning.

"Crap." She's just remembered that Lucy's birthday, March 31st, was only four days away. Thirteen. What did you get someone for their thirteenth? Someone like Lucy, who had money enough to buy anything they liked? Crumbs.

"You've just remembered my birthday, haven't you?" Lucy said through a pumpkin pasty. Jon also did a double take and scribbled something on his hand. "You two are so useless. I always remember yours; Conny is December 22nd, because it's so close to Christmas, and Jon's is May 7th."

"How do you remember my birthday?" Jon asked.

"Simple. It's the day that Khai was sentenced to life in Azkaban."

"Charming." Conny muttered as Jon hung his head. "Erm, anyway, what d'you want for your birthday?"

"An owl."

"Lucy, I can't afford an owl."

"Tch. If not that… how about… actually, never mind. You're letting me stay for Easter, that's all I want. And Jon, too, is keeping me company."

"You're sure you don't want anything?"

Lucy shook her head, looking suddenly overwhelmed. "No, no, I just want company. You know, friends and all."

"You have loads of friends, Luce."

"Oui, zere is not one person at 'Ogwarts zat does not like you."

"Except Ralphus."

"Oh- oui, I suppose everybody except Ralphus."

"No offense to them, but I'd prefer just you two." Lucy said quietly. "You're not afraid to tell me when I'm a prat."

"You're always a prat, Luce."

"Shuddup." Lucy stuck her tongue out. "Hey, I think I see Manchester on the horizon."

"Great, another four hours."

"Halfway, Conny."

"Tch. I can't wait until I can apparate."

Lucy pensively disagreed. "Apparition is a fickle thing. You know when wizards apparate, they leave that little puff of smoke? Well, Ali was telling me about it; it's basically lazy apparating and you leave a cloud of dust and stuff off your robes and some of your magical residue behind."

"That makes sense. Since you're translating a sentient quantity-"

Lucy hushed her sternly. "Anyway, before brainiac interrupted, I was going to say that the colour of that smoke is quite… informative."

"How come?"

"Well, your magical residue is denser if you're using powerful dark magic, isn't it? And it settles more. So anyone you apparate in front of can tell what sort of person you are. Black cloud equals dark wizard."

"Only if you're lazy though." Jon said. "Surely if you apparated properly, zere would be no dust and no problem?"

"But would people think you had something to hide?"

"I dunno, maybe." Conny thought, scratching her head. "But we don't get taught until… sixth year?"

"Something like that. I know Luke can apparate; he was explaining it to me the other day." Lucy said.

The Hogwarts Express rocketed south, bringing with it the stiff winds and tentative sun of spring. When Conny and Lucy got off the tube, they were surprised to see that Mrs. Palmerson's front garden had finally, as she had been threatening it would for years, exploded into colour. Conny's Dad was working late, and her mum had popped to the takeaway for something for dinner, so Conny, instead of going straight home, made her way up Malachite Hill. She nearly missed the tiny side street that contained the Inbetween House, as everybody did. Since she'd been gone, more rubbish- flyers for some muggle circus, burger wrappers, and the like – had managed to accrue in the corner.

"Top property." Lucy observed, looking at the tiny façade of the house. Conny fumbled until she managed to fit the key in the front door's complicated lock, opening it up.

Three months' neglect had allowed a thin film of dust to settle around, but the house was still squeaky-clean. Since it was a wizard property, it was lit mostly with oil lamps, but Conny had made a rudimentary effort to reroute some of next door's electricity to power only four energy-saving lightbulbs she was sure would go unnoticed.

"You want the grand tour?" Conny asked, hanging up her coat on the creaky stand.

"Sure. It's bigger on the inside."

"Of course it is. So's my house, and most wizard places."

"My house isn't. My brothers are paranoid that someone will find where they live by detecting the enlarging charm." She explained, examining the painting on the wall. "This is really beautiful."

"I know. Whoever lived here had horrible taste in everything else, but the décor is fabulous."

"Show me around?" The energy-saving lightbulbs had finally lit up enough to let them see.

"On the ground floor, we have four rooms- the hallway, here, then straight ahead is the kitchen. On the left, the… well, I want to call it a living room, but it's a fireplace and a sofa." She showed Lucy into the tiny room, looking very lonely without a television or a scrabble board, then the kitchen, which was thankfully free of poisonous fungus now. "The toilet is just in that white door there."

Lucy poked her head around the toilet and harrumphed. "No looroll."

"You're living here- you go buy some."

"In… a muggle shop?"

"Yes, Lucy, in a muggle shop." Conny rolled her eyes. "Now, up the stairs- hang on a bit, the landing is only big enough for one at a time- we have just one room."

"Just one?

"Trust me."

Conny opened the door to the upstairs room, and couldn't help herself. She gasped. The sun was setting over London, and it seemed, impossibly, like she had a view of the whole city from this scummy little alley. The window that the glass spider had made was flawless, perfect, amazing… it seemed to make the world outside larger, more detailed, more beautiful by half and half again.

"Holy Merlin." Lucy breathed, stepping across the wooden floor to stand next to the window. It seemed to light the whole room up brilliant white and pink, casting long, waving shadows. "I tell what, that view is nearly worth dying for."

"You nearly did die for it." Conny reminded her. Lucy reflexively clenched her right hand, where two tiny puckered scars with diamonds embedded in them dwelt.

"Well, it's awesome." She turned away from the window quickly. "What're the white sheets?"

"Oh, I never removed them. It was sort of strange, when I first found here, they were untouched. No a stain or a speck on them. I thought… they must be special, for the wizard who lived here to go through such pains to preserve whatever's under them."

"Can we remove them?"

Conny checked her watch. "My mum will be home really soon, and she'll freak out if I'm not. I'm in enough trouble for Christmas as it is. Tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow."

"I'll bring some holiday work and we can do it here."

"Ugh." Lucy said, sitting on the bed that Conny had made out of salvage. It creaked slightly, but the hodge-podge frame she'd constructed worked. The mattress had been appropriated from a second-hand shop, but she'd sprayed it thoroughly with ever anti-disease, anti-insect and anti-fungal product the wizarding world had ken to think to produce, so she was sure it was safe. "Thanks, Conny. For putting me up, I mean."

"No problem, Luce."

"And… and…" What she was trying to say seemed difficult to articulate. "And, um… well, for putting up with me."

"Lucy, I said earlier on the train that it's fine. You're my best friend."

"I know that." Said Lucy. "It's just… I mean, my brothers took a pop at you just because we're friends. I'm selfish and I don't think before I speak. I know I treat you badly sometimes. In fact… I think I treat everyone badly. I can't change. I've tried but it's like trying to stop a spell after you've said the words… impossible."

"We all change, Luce. If you don't feel like you are now, well, maybe in four years we'll look back on this moment and you'll say that you can't believe how much you've changed without realizing it. Don't worry. We're all fine."

Without warning, Lucy launched herself off the bed into a rib-crushing hug.

"Oof."

"I love you, Conny. You're amazing."

The physical affection daunted her a bit, but Conny reciprocated. "It's cool. I love you too. Let's try not to fight."

"I promise to try my hardest."

"That's all you can do."

_Cell Forty-Seven, Azkaban Prison, North Sea_

_Dear Khai,_

_Since Xmas with Aunt Fats was crap and Ali's baby is like about to pop out of his girlfriend, I'm staying the Easter hols with Conny. Please don't send anything to kill her this time, or I'll be really angry. But, because I'm a good person, I have forgave you._

_The Inbetween House is really nice now that Conny did it up. It's cool, and it means I don't have to stay with any of our brothers. But I do have to buy looroll and food at this muggle shop down the road. It's weird and I get so confused. It's called 'Sainsbury's' and it's a huuuuge warehouse like where you guys store illegal stuff, but filled with rows and rows of food and other stuff. Muggles are allowed to just take stuff off the shelves, but then, stupid gits, they queue up by these beepy machines with fat old women by them and pay for them! I've already found a way to not have to do this. Working in Fats' café didn't prepare me for the Sainsbury's._

_Anyway, I have also discovered that muggles use two types of looroll, and that the type that doesn't feel like greasproof paper is very expensive. It also has tiny koalas printed on it, which feels awkward._

_I hope your Easter hasn't been too horrible. Is the weather better in the North Sea in Spring? Hopefully. You're innocent and I'm going to get you out of there. Trust me._

_Love,_

_Lucy_

-0-

The next morning, Conny excused herself from her own house and made the short walk to Malachite hill. When she unlocked the door to the Inbetween House, the smell of frying bacon and eggs assaulted her nostrils.

"Ohmygods." She said, sucking some drool back in. Lucy was in the kitchen, humming about and making breakfast like she'd been born doing it. "Wow, Luce, that smells amazing."

"You do learn some things from working in a café." She checked the sausages under the grill. "Though this oven really is the pits."

"Don't blame me; it's not my house."

"Whose is it, then?" Lucy asked, struggling with the toaster.

"No idea. A wizard, I'm sure, because the seat was left up when I arrived. And there was a man's hat on the stand. He lived here by himself."

"Tch. Anything else?"

"Well, when I got here there were all these murky pots of water by the sink."

"Hmm. We should go look under the sheets after breakfast." Said Lucy, ladling out eggs and bacon onto two plates. The sausages were more sort of coaxed off the fork, as they were slightly overcooked, but the toast was good. This was more to do with the toaster, and not Lucy, being involved in the cooking process, Conny suspected, but she still munched through the meal with gusto, sat around the tiny kitchen table.

"I'll tell you something," Lucy said through a mouthful of egg, "The upstairs room isn't half creepy at night. Those sheets, like, glow. I keep thinking they're ghosts."

"Scared of the dark, the almighty Lucy Ra?"

"Tch. You wish. I, who's saved your arse twice now."

"Now you're being pratty."

"I'm just so skilled like that." Lucy grinned. They finished breakfast, Conny slowly, though, unsure about the drapes. It seemed like breaking a sacred pact to remove them… even if she had done up the Inbetween House.

Still, she had to know. They washed the dishes and move upstairs. It was a clear day, and the light from the window illuminated the sheets until they were blindingly white. Lucy had opened it slightly, allowing the lukewarm air to swish through the room and slightly ruffle the skirts of the sheets.

"Well."

"Well indeed."

"You should take them off, Conny."

"But-"

Lucy gave her the 'now _you're_ being a prat' glare and Conny tentatively scrunched up a fistful of one of the sheets, feeling the magic tingle through her hand.

"I don't got all day."

Conny pulled the sheet off.

"Circe."

"Hang on- this one too."

"They're all… what on earth?"

They pulled all of the sheets off.

Paintings.

Five of them. Huge paintings in wooden frames. What they depicted…

"It's the stolen painting. From France."

"What, the one you and Jon saw?"

"Yes. This is it. Exactly. Except… except, Lucy, they're still. This is a wizard house. Wizard paintings should move. The one in the Gallery should have moved."

"They're all the same, sort of wintery. With a castle."

"All of them?"

"Yup."

"Why would he paint so many?"

"No idea, mate." Lucy said, marveling at the quality of the paintings. "How much d'you think they're worth?"

"This isn't the time to think about things like that!" said Conny, affronted, gazing into the winter scene with her brow furrowed. Something about it reminded her of something she'd seen before- somewhere. Hmmm. "I hate mysteries."

"You love them, babe." Lucy corrected, running the sheets between her fingers. "So there are these five, and then the sixth one that was at the gallery?" Lucy asked.

"No. No, there are seven. These five, the real one that was stolen, and then another one from this lot that was returned by Méprise Maufoi, the squib."

"Seven is a very magical number. What's the significance of the seventh painting? Obviously these are duds."

"I don't know! It makes no sense. Lucius Malfoy steals a painting, and then his disowned squib brother publicly returns a copy of it. Why does he want it?"

"Maybe just because he liked it? It's very pretty."

"No," Conny shook her head, "No, it's almost like… like Méprise was trying to be so public about returning the fake one because he wanted people to realize that his brother had stolen the real one."

"Brothers fighting over the painting? My brothers do that all the time, fight over artifacts and profits and stuff." Lucy put in.

"Why get so het up about this one painting, though? Why would Méprise let himself get arrested for theft, put in prison, just to lead us to Lucius?"

Lucy patted her on the shoulder. "Maybe you should stop worrying about it."

"No! I know there's something important, something I'm missing…"

"Conny, I love you and all, but sometimes you have to let things go. Like the Hogwarts motto- _Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus._"

"Never tickle a sleeping dragon, I know."

"Maybe, then, you shouldn't tickle this sleeping dragon. I know the Malfoys- Lucius is as dark as they go. My brothers had dealings with him in the past. His wife is from the Black family- you've read the genealogy, you know how regal they are. They've got this baby son- he'd be about three or four now – and I'd bet my little fingers that he'll grow up as bad as his daddy."

"But-"

"No buts. As you friend, I'm telling you that this is only going to get you into trouble."

"Since when're you so rational?"

"I'm just trying to stop you doing something that will make me have to save your life again."

"Hey!"

Lucy gave her the finger, laughing, and skipped out of the way as Conny lunged at her. A short chase ensued, and they ended up collapsed on the sofa missing a sock each.

"Oof… ugh." Conny panted, searching for that wayward sock. "Merlin, my breakfast hasn't settled enough for this!"

"Well, at least your breakfast seems only to settle in your tits." Lucy complained. "My chest is so flat you could do your homework on it."

"One day, Luce. You're just a slower developer."

"Maybe, but I'd like to develop before I can draw a pension."

"Trust me, it's not as awesome as you think. It's really embarrassing having to ask your mum for an anti-menstruation charm."

"What?"

Conny blushed. "You know… oh, maybe you don't. You've only got brothers."

"Conny, what're you on about?"

"Er… oh gods, Lucy I'm so, so not the person to give you this talk."

"The sex talk? Alexi was always very blunt with me about that, it's cool."

"No, not the sex talk." Conny cringed. "The, er, the 'what happens to girls of a certain age' talk."

"Huh- oh. Oh, I see. Don't use long words like that, it confuses me. So, er, you've started?"

"Yes… actually, I bring it up because it was just, um, last night actually."

"Why didn't you tell me? I would've… um, you know, not made you run around and stuff."

"Lucy, I said my mum had an anti-menstruation charm."

"But your mum's a muggle."

"She had my dad do it, and waited until I was ready. It's not really a father-daughter thing." Conny fished around in the front of the loose pink shirt she was wearing and brought out a silver medallion on a thin chain. In response to being brought into the dim light, it glowed faintly white. "Apparently the little figure on this is St. Agnes, who is the patron saint of young women and virgins. Oh, and gardeners and betrothed couples and girl guides, too, but I think she didn't really think about that."

"Is your mum religious?"

"Yes. Church of England, and dad doesn't mind it, but he thinks churches are creepy. And dusty. Very dusty." Conny twiddled the necklace around her fingers. "I'm meant to take it off only when I want to make babies."

"Ew. Let's not talk about making babies, please? I don't even want to talk about… you know, periods."

"Right. Okay. No anatomy or stuff. How about we talk birthdays?"

"I already said, you don't have to get me-"

"I'm not getting you anything; I just think that thirteen is a big milestone. At least it is for muggles, and I'm willing to bet that your brothers don't give a banshee's toenail about celebrating it."

Lucy shifted uncomfortably. "They send presents. And it's fine, they're busy."

"Lucy, you can't have people ignore your _birthday_."

"I said, they send presents."

"That's not celebrating. I'm throwing you a party." Conny affirmed to Lucy's appalled face. "Here, in this house. With all our friends."

"Really?"

"Yep. And I'll make sure that everyone comes. So you won't just get presents in the mail. You're worth more than that."

Lucy gave her a squealy hug. "But-"

"Shh." Conny gave her a stern look. "I'll have you know that I plan parties as well as I differentiate complex transdimentional shift equations."

"Now you're just being pratty."

"Am I ever not?"

-0-

Rissa Mothley sniffed, made a face, and hovered at the doorway of the Inbetween House.

"C'mon, Riss, the night isn't getting any younger." Lucy moaned, tugging on her sleeve. "I don't need to invite you in, do I? You haven't suddenly become a vampire?"

"I assure you, I would not associate with those sorts of creatures in the first place."

"Then, c'mon! We've got cola and twister and all sorts of fun!" Lucy giggled, pulling Rissa, who was dressed as though she was about to go to the coronation of a new monarch or a very stately funeral. When Conny had put 'dress nice' on the invitation, she hadn't meant Sunday best, though evidently she and Rissa moved in very different social circles.

Once the door was closed, Lucy pulled Rissa through the hallway and into the house proper. It was a little small to house everyone they'd invited, but they made do. Lucy attracted a big crowd, and since they had a working fireplace connected to the floo network it wasn't a big deal for everyone to turn up for the evening. In the living room, the bulk of Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs were engaged in a (literally) gut-wrenching game of twister, with Tilda Tirias at the spinner. This was fairly amusing, as Tilda's psychic abilities meant that she called the result before the thing stopped spinning. In the kitchen, the Ravenclaws hung out, sipping what may or may not have been cola and arguing lightly. Topics discussed included WHY OH WHY Darrell from The Wanded was dating Edna from girlband The Boomslangs, and could dried puffskeins be used in love potions instead of Ashwinder eggs, or would that totally mess them up?

There were only two Slytherins present. Rissa was the newest addition, but Az Spooks had been here since early that day. He'd helped organize things and do the heavy lifting of many, many bottles of cola.

"Everybody!" Conny yelled at the top of her voice. "Her ladyship Rissa has arrived! Everyone's here! Time for games!"

"Games?" Rosie asked, her head poking out from under Edwin's torso and between Bill Weasley's left arm and right leg on the twister mat. "I thought we were already playing them?"

"No, proper games!" Conny grinned, sweeping the twister mat from under them and causing all the players to collapse in a great heap.

"Please say we're not playing pass the puffskein or pin the legs on the acromantula." Lucy groaned, being manhandled out of the kitchen into the cramped living room.

"No, no. We're going to play Who Am I?"

"I wrote out the cards." Az put in helpfully. "And Conny put them on these muggle things called pose-tits."

"Post-its, Az." Conny rolled her eyes. "It'll be a hoot. Everyone take one of these and stick it to your forehead. You can't look at it yourself. You have to ask yes or no questions to everyone else to find out who you are."

"I see." Rissa said, carefully sticking the note to her head. It proclaimed proudly that she was Corfax.

"The thing is… everyone is someone else in this room. So we all learn about each other!"

"You mean, we all learn what everyone else thinks of us." Bill pointed out, his shaggy red hair nearly hiding the fact that his note said he was Polly. "Interesting choice."

"Well, it was this or Truth or Dare, and Az told me that isn't fun until everyone hits puberty."

"Tch," Anna said, "Way to ruin it for us, Gil."

Gil Lockhart, who was busy reading his book of Arthurian Legends, looked up and pushed his glasses up his nose. "You can't talk, Professor Atremidus thought you were a first-year boy two weeks ago."

"She's short-sighted!" Anna fumed.

"Er- how about we get on with the game?" Conny suggested, slapping her own post-it on her forehead. "How about we start with the birthday girl?"

Lucy, busy pickpocketing Corfax next to her, snapped to attention. She was, for the purpose of the game, Az.

"Er- am I a boy or a girl?"

"That isn't a yes or no question."

"Shut up."

"You're a boy." Polly told her.

"I get three questions, right? Then I have to guess."

"Correct."

"Er… am I attractive?"

Conny blushed, and all the girls zoned in on Az. "Oh, yes, you're pretty hot." Rebecca grinned. Conny possessively shuffled closer to Az.

"Hmm. Well, it's either Az or Edwin without his glasses." Edwin, affronted, adjusted his large spectacles. He would indeed be cute without them, as he shared his twin sister Tilda's copper-coloured skin, large brown eyes and glossy mahogany hair.

"So I guess my last question is, am I currently seeing Conny?"

The silence was punctuated only by seventeen heads turning to ogle at Conny and Az. It wasn't like they were being secretive! In fact, they definitely weren't going out, anyway!

"Unless there's something you're not telling me, Ted, yes, Lucy, you are currently seeing Conny."

"Then I'm Az Spooks." Lucy unstuck her post-it and triumphantly fist-pumped. "How d'you like this game now, DeH?"

"Remember the talk we had about not being a prat?" Conny threatened her playfully, her face on full blush.

"So, are you two an item now?" Polly asked.

"No. No, no, no, nada, ixnay, pas." Conny shook her head vehemently.

"We're not?" Az asked, bewildered.

"No!"

There was a collective sucking in of breath. Bill whispered something about a fight.

"But, we did romantic walks and joint quidditch and stuff."

"That doesn't mean we're going out."

"But it does!"

"No, it doesn't. Why just assume that?"

"Because- oh, hell, we'll talk about this later." Az adjusted the collar of his jersey awkwardly. "How about you go next, Rissa?"

"If I must." She sighed. "Am I male or female?"

"Perhaps." Gil sniggered.

"Oi! Don't be a prick, Gil." Rebecca scowled at him. "You're a boy, Riss."

"Thank you. Am I in Gryffindor House?"

"Nope."

"Do I weight under fifty kilograms?"

"Er- no. Riss, you're not quite getting this."

"I am Corfax."

"This is getting sort of hurtful." Lucy said uneasily. Derek was quietly admonishing his sister for being rude. "Maybe we should just skip to Truth or Dare."

"No! One more try."

"One more. Then we switch. How about you go, Conny?"

"Okay. I'll mix it up. Am I the sort of person who'd cheat on a test?"

"Definitely."

"Hmm. Okay, would I flirt with a teacher to get better grades?"

"Yes. Regardless of that teacher's gender or age, probably." Az said acerbically.

"Ah hah! I don't need my third question, I'm obviously Lucy."

"Correct."

"You really think I'd flirt with a teacher?" Lucy asked, looking every so slightly offended, but equally as though the idea was quite a good one and she hadn't thought of it before.

"Oh yes. You and Professor Snape, getting steamy over an arousal draught."

"Oh, Miss Ra, five points to Ravenclaw… ten if you stroke my greasy mug-"

"Ew. Ew, ew and triple ew." Lucy made a gagging motion. "I would rather snog a troll."

"I'd imagine that the experience of snogging a troll would be similar to that of kissing professor Snape." Rissa said, deadpan.

The room was silent.

"Did she… did she just make a joke?"

"Was there something in the drinks?"

"Are you feeling okay, Rissa?"

"I am allowed to make amusing quips, am I not?"

"You can, it's just you usually don't." Lucy said. "Um, how about we go Truth or Dare? I'm just worried that if we keep playing this, Rissa will make another joke, and too many of those in one night and she might explode."

Rissa didn't seem to find that amusing.

"That's a good idea. Truth or Dare. Nice, safe, truth or dare."

"Excellent."

-0-

"Y'know, I didn't think this place had a roof." Lucy yawned. They'd found a trapdoor in the upstairs bedroom that led to the grimy rooftop of the Inbetween house. Once thoroughly swept of several years worth of grime and leaves and augmented with a couple of sun loungers, it was very serviceable for sunbathing.

"You learn something new every day." Conny sipped a glass of lemonade and adjusted her bikini. "I don't feel comfortable in this, Luce."

"Deal with it. If you've got the tits, you can't complain. I'm tired of looking like a little child."

"Don't wish to grow up too soon." Conny replied sagely. "Else you'll find yourself saggy and wrinkly before you're forty."

"I'm just jealous of your tits." Lucy grumbled, adjusting her sunglasses. "So, what about you and Az, ey? How did that shit go down?"

"Ugh. Just ugh. Why did he think we were going out?"

"Well, you did spend half of the spring term with him. Romantic walks, the like. And you haven't stopped talking about him. And you wanted to kiss him."

"But- but he's nearly fifteen! And it's weird because he obviously knows how these things work, and I don't, and I'm just-"

"Con, seriously. Dating isn't a transfiguration equation, you don't have to stress this much about it. If it comes, it comes… if not, move on, deal with it."

"Since when are you an Agony Aunt?"

"Since I've been on more dates with arms dealers' sons than you've had hot dinners. And a couple of arms dealers' daughters, too, now you mention it."

"We live in progressive times."

"Indeed we do. Anyway, as I was saying, take my advice on this one. It's probably the only field I surpass you in."

"Aw, don't say that. You're a better pickpocket than me!"

"I'm invoking the prat principle."

"Shuddup."

-0-

Easter came and went, with lengthening, sunny days spent around Shepherd's Bush, wafting between the Inbetween House and the park, lazy hours of chess (which Conny was still terrible at), talking (which Lucy was very good at) and holiday work, which thankfully was a reasonably shared strength. By the time Conny had finished with her, Lucy could quite readily recite every iterance of Eosir's Constant, complete with equations, and was very pleased with herself. The constant singing of the phrase: 'staford measure over distance moved/twenty prosec translate makes me groove!' was getting slightly annoying, if only because Lucy was a terrible singer.

Jon eventually did turn up, closer to the start of the summer term than not, bringing all of his luggage with him and a note from his parents saying that he was to stay in England until school started. Of course, they then had to devote time to getting _his_ holiday work done, but after that, they went on a trip by muggle trains to Brighton, where they mucked about by the seaside and Jon lost a lot of muggle money in an amusement pier.

"Daddy?" Conny asked one night as the family was sitting out in the garden at 92 Poet's Place after a barbecue.

"What, sweetheart?"

"You know that wizard paintings are magical?"

"Yes."

"Well, what would happen if you painted exactly the same painting seven times? Would the seventh one be special?" She asked.

David sipped his beer, looking contemplative. "It's been a long while since I did my T.O.A.D., honey. But I think… I think I remember going to a lecture about that. Back in nineteen… fifty-nine, it might have been. The seven-repetition principle. I won't bore you with the details, bit seven is the most powerful magical number, and anything done seven times is likely to be more powerful. So, I would assume that the seventh painting would be the most powerfully imbued with whatever spell the artist wished to put on it."

"What sort of spells could that be?"

"Gosh, love, it could be anything." David scratched his stubbly chin. "I'm sorry I can't be more help."

"No, it's fine. Just doing a little extra research for Arithmancy, you know? Professor Vector likes that."

"Ugh, I remember Arithmancy. I failed that O.W.L." He groaned. "Well, you must have got your brains from your mum, because I'm pretty hopeless."

"Don't put yourself down, dear." Liz said, "After all, Conny couldn't have got her brains from me either; I'm a teacher."

"Don't be silly, Liz, you have a good degree!" David protested.

"When I was a lot younger, they didn't let muggle women study much at university. I was lucky."

"Times have changed."

"For the better, I agree. How are wizards in that respect?"

"Oh, we've never had such silly notions about women. Of the four Hogwarts founders, two were men, two were women. There isn't as much of a gap as there is for muggles, I think."

"Must be nice. When you graduate, Conny, you can be anything." Liz said. "Do you have any idea what you like doing?"

"Taking baths and deriving equations." Conny answered immediately. Her mum and dad gave her looks.

"We meant careers, darling."

"Well, if there was a career that had both of those in it, I'd like to do that."

"Erm… maybe it's too early for this. Give it a couple of years." They agreed. "How about we light some candles?"


	20. Chapter 19

Chapter Nineteen: Gil Lockhart Tells a Story

The Hogwarts Express rocketed towards Scotland, carrying upon it many rowdy, half-dressed teenagers enjoying the sun. The window of Conny's compartment was wide open, and the sun was warm and constant all the way up. Lucy was napping, taking up a whole side by herself, and Tilda and Jon were sitting cross-legged on the floor engaged in a tempestuous card game. Jon was losing, probably because Tilda knew which cards would come up before they did. Damn the Inner Eye.

They changed into their uniforms as a cool twilight fell, and Conny realized how quickly she was growing. Her black school robes now hung several inches above her ankles and looked just a little silly. Why was this happening to her first? Lucy and Tilda were still flat as boards and short as gnomes. They weren't going to have to sidle up to Ally and surreptitiously ask for an anti-acne charm, and they didn't have to worry about getting moody and then ecstatic in the same hour with no explanation. And most of all, they didn't have people assume that they suddenly wanted to 'go out' with anyone! Especially Az Spooks.

But, she thought to herself grumpily, she still got a tingly feeling when she was around him. And she wanted to kiss him. But the idea of going out didn't appeal. Be like Luke and Ally? No thanks.

"You've got your granny face, Con." Lucy murmured from her nap, stretching and yawning in a very cat-like manner. "Hah, your robes are, like, at your knees."

"It's not funny."

"You must be what? Five-four?"

"I dunno, I don't really check these things."

"I'm still bumbling about down at five square." Lucy grumbled. "We are not going to work if I have to look up at you every time I want to make an offensive comment."

"Well, with how it's going, soon Lucy will have to complain about Conny's breast size- to her actual breasts, if you don't grow some more." Tilda said. "But don't worry, you'll grow four inches between now and the time Conny hits five-six."

"How does she do that?" Lucy whispered dramatically as Tilda won again at cards. "But that means that Conny is going to still be taller than me!"

"Conny is Caucasian; she has a better genetic chance of being tall anyway. You, Lucy, are half-Arab, and so are predisposed to being shorter."

"So it's all dad's fault?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"Oh, well. There'll be a spell to make me taller available at some point, I won't worry myself on it."

"I can't decide if zat's a good or bad attitude to 'ave." Jon said. "Merde! Again, Tilda, you're cheating!"

"No, I'm not."

"You are! I don't want to play anymore, I'm going to see Az."

Lucy made a 'kekeke' noise in the back of her throat; she'd taken to doing it every time Az's name was mentioned. Conny glared at her. "Conny, of all the rebounds, you have to admit that you didn't expect that Az would go for Jon."

"Har-har." Conny replied. "Go talk to him about quidditch if you want, Jon. You don't need my permission."

"If you want, I would blank 'im for you." Jon offered earnestly, a glossy quidditch magazine tucked under his arm.

"Nah, don't worry. He's a prat anyway." Jon nodded and left, whistling the anthem of the Falmouth Falcons. Once he was gone, Conny gave a low sigh and slumped against the window. "There is no point in boys. I'm going to buy twenty cats and live alone until I die."

"You could become a lesbian?" Lucy suggested. "I've got a lesbian aunt, she does all right. Well, dad stopped talking to her when she turned up one Christmas with auntie Hanna and announced that they'd got engaged… but your parents are lovely, they wouldn't mind."

"Lucy, I'm not going to become a lesbian. I just… ugh, I don't understand Az! Why did he think we were going out? In fact, why does everything have to have a box, a 'we're definitely going out' or not? Can't I just… y'know, do whatever?"

"It isn't that simple, Con." Lucy said, at which Tilda nodded sagely. "It's the social game. You're a leader; you've got to show everyone clearly what you do to set the… what's the word? Prethient?"

"Precedent." Conny gloomily informed her. "I've got to set the precedent? But I'm not a leader. You're the leader, Luce, everybody hangs off every word you say."

"Untrue. So untrue. Think about it, Conny. You're one of the oldest, and you're more mature than the rest of us. You attract attention. I have a reputation as… well, I would call it…"

"Unwholesome?" Tilda suggested. Lucy nodded.

"Yep, unwholesome. Cus of my brothers, I guess. Anyway, people worry that using me as a template will give them the same, slightly… unwholesome reputation. So as much as they may want to be me- don't look like that, you said it yourself – they'd much rather be like you."

"Why?"

"You're a complicated, intelligent heroine." Tilda said dreamily. "Who wouldn't want to be you?"

"Um, me." Conny said. "Seriously, if some first-year wants all my problems, they're welcome. Some days I'd rather be normal."

"Liar. You'd get bored too easily."

"Maybe." Conny smiled weakly, twirling one of her auburn curls around a finger. "So, Lucy, you're a dating guru, what should I do about Az?"

Lucy thought for a moment, gazing at a knot in the wooden wall of the compartment just above Conny's left ear. "Well, as I see it, you've got two choices, and I don't think you'll like either."

"Between a rock and a hard place." Conny groaned.

"I'm hoping that Az is the hard place." Tilda winked, breaking from her usually absentminded waffle to say something dirty. Conny cleared her throat with a blush.

"Anyway," Lucy began again, "Choices."

"Oh yes, do go on."

"Choice one is you decide you're too different. You wait until you fancy someone else; get a different boyfriend who doesn't mind not being your actual boyfriend. Maybe you can ask Professor Snape out?"

"Eck."

"Hmm, maybe not. The second choice is - you grow a pair, figuratively speaking of course – and commit to being Az's girlfriend."

"But… but you have to be like Luke and Ally!"

"I'm invoking the Prat Principle." Tilda said quietly. "Applicable to silence a person when they're being a prat."

"Rats." Conny cursed.

"Conny, you're very smart, but there isn't really a book to explain how relationships work." Lucy said. "A relationship is unique, induvidual. You don't necessarily become a simpering idiot when you get a boyfriend."

"Though that is a danger." Tilda said wisely. "Perhaps you should think for a while; I do believe that I see the lights of Hogsmeade in the distance."

"Bohrrajz!" Lucy swore in bad Arabic, adjusting her tie so that it hid the fact that her top button was undone. "I just remembered that I forgot to buy some aconite! Snape is going to balls me!"

"My turn to say eck." Tilda scrunched up her usually placid face. "Just borrow some, it isn't the end of the world."

"Don't say things like that." Conny and Lucy said together. "You're a Seer and we've had more than our fair share of dangerous, life-threatening trouble so far. Keep the words end and world in separate sentences."

"Eesh. Okay." Tilda help up her hands in defeat.

"I'm serious." Conny said, a slight edge in her voice. She liked Tilda; they were good friends, but whenever Conny looked on that soft, brown face she was reminded of the prophecy. Her prophecy. Tilda nodded almost imperceptibly, and Lucy missed the whole exchange because she was cursing and fretting about her aconite deficit.

The train's brakes started up, their grinding piercing the stillness of the evening air in Hogsmeade. Conny, Lucy and Tilda quickly got out into the corridor and bagsied a door, much to the disgruntlement of a group of Hufflepuff fourth-years who then started up a very loud and obvious conversation about Az Spooks's… below-belt shortcomings. Ignoring it, she left the train as soon as was possible and got into a horseless carriage. Bored on the relatively short ride to the castle, Conny played I-spy with Lucy, as she'd learned a while ago that playing any game with Tilda was a losing battle.

"Hey, d'you think Ralph has grown over the hols?" She asked after correctly guessing 'tree' for the third time. "Check him out, over there."

Conny and Tilda gazed over at the carriage full of Ravenclaw boys. Ralphus was laughing with his pals; indeed the only one taller than him now was Gil Lockhart.

"A bit. But they're still so… ugh. Ralphus is weedy, Gil's bulky, Lawrence doesn't wash and Feol looks like he's about to murder someone and eat their eyeballs." Conny said. "No, no, no and no-er."

"Picky little sod, aren't you?" Lucy said sourly. "You prefer older boys, eh, Conny?"

"Shuddup."

"Az, Az, Az, Az-"

"I'm going to murder you in your sleep, Ra." She threatened, making a comic fist.

"Stuff it up your arse." Lucy gave her the finger. "Ooh, I smell fish!"

"Er- wha?"

Lucy sniffed. "Definitely fish. Pollack, methinks. Beer-battered, with… sweet potato chips. Garden peas. Omnom."

"How the hell do you know that?"

"Years of practice." Lucy puffed her chest out proudly. "I like food."

"I tell you what, the only thing separating you and Corfax is an astonishing metabolism."

"Pssh." Lucy grinned and hopped off as the carriage ground to a halt. "Takeaways and Jon's limited cooking skills are all fine, but I want some Hogwarts food."

"Really? I find it heavy."

"Fulfilling is what you mean."

"You'll get fat."

"You'll get boring; now, let's go. Food awaits!"

"Prat."

"_Hungry_ prat. Into the valley of food walked the six hungry!"

-0-

Conny sat, stirring porridge around her bowl pensively, watching Curtis King try and figure out how to get sugar out of the dispenser. As amusing as it was, she was sort of in a funk that not even some transetherial integrals could lift her out of. She had Maths Can Be Magical propped open against a toast rack and was cramming for the surprise pop quiz that Tilda had helpfully informed her that Professor Vector was going to spring on them in Arithmancy first period. The only thing she could keep in her head was the number seven. Seven paintings of the same scene. A spell. The Legend of Caradoc. The missing Caradoc, friend of Maenalus Malfoy. Something linked them. Something… big.

It made her head hurt even more than the dizzying picture of an octopus on page forty-four did, so she closed Maths Can Be Magical and decided to go and stand somewhere quiet.

Nothing was going right at the moment. She and Az were estranged; she missed his companionship terribly, but knew now that there was no way she could face him unless she went out with him, which she wasn't sure she wanted to. Teachers were piling on work, ready for the approaching summer exams, and all the older students were hysterical about their O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s. Lucy had been making a killing sidelining as a salesman of powdered dragon claw, and was multiplying her money by sending Tilda into Boris Malasten's crew's weekly poker match. Soon they were going to get wise to the fact that Tilda knew all their hands, but at the moment she couldn't move for the bags of galleons she was accruing.

Conny knew that she could solve the painting mystery. Something was missing, and when she found it, everything would fall into place. It was just the frustration of waiting for this to happen that was making her edgy. Professor McGonagall had taken to serving her herbal tea to try and get her to relax during her extra lessons. The Draught of Peace was out of the question, of course. The worst thing about stress was that Conny found herself having a familiar and unsettling dream, the one about the cloaked figures on the hillside. They just stared at her, boring holes with their invisible eyes into her soul, seeing all her secrets. She woke sometimes in a sweat, the scar on her back itching, her hands trembling, flashing images of the war running through her head. Wizards in black watching caskets by the thousand enter the earth; suspicions and stomach cramps, the cruel laugh of Death Eaters. It was like she'd be afforded no rest until she solved the riddle of the painting.

Everyone noticed her new irritability, however she tired to hide it. Her grades fell- not much, but from full marks to top marks. She sat in lessons not listening, pencil in hand but nothing being written down. In a strange reversal, Lucy now took down notes and Conny had to copy them. She couldn't bring herself to eat much. It felt like last year, the misery, the tired thud through the day, waking up to more pollen, warmer weather, and the stifling heat of the classroom. Lucy staged several early interventions, but nothing quite worked.

"I'm just worried about her." She overhead Lucy whispering to Tilda in the Ravenclaw Commons as they played chess. "She's so distracted… I just dunno. Is it Az?"

"No, no, it's not that." Tilda said. "Check."

"Bastard." Lucy loosened her collar, a bead of sweat on the end of her nose dripping onto one of Tilda's bishops. "Then what is it?"

Tilda hummed quietly, her eyes unfocused. Conny stayed behind the pillar, not wanting to be seen. After a time, Tilda moved a rook. "Checkmate. I'll go talk to her."

"But I'm her best friend." Lucy protested, flicking her king over in disgust. "If I can't do anything… well, some friend I am."

"Don't think like that. Look, you'll prove yourself soon. Don't worry."

"You know I hate it when you make vague comments about the future." She complained. "Oh well. I'll see you."

"Yes." Tilda stood up slowly, stretching and yawning, her dark hair cascading over her shoulders. Tilda was very pretty, but also usually felt very distant, lost in the future. "I think I saw Conny hanging around the Great Hall; I'll go find her there."

It was an order, so Conny took it, trekking downstairs. Tilda emerged from the secret slide near the Potions corridor entrance a few minutes after her, looking disapproving. She gestured for them to walk out onto the grounds. It was a lovely day, and early evening. The midges were out in force, but a lazy charm stopped them bothering the two girls. The walked for a long time before Tilda spoke.

"I don't like to reveal most things that I see." She started, looking into the sunset, "Because you should find them on your own."

Anger welled up inside Conny's chest; hot and thick like a constricting snake, sending her blood pumping. She'd been trying to figure it out. She really had. Sleepless nights, endless hours of the library, all of that tosh. It wasn't working. She was at a dead end, ad for Tilda to just so brazenly tell her she wasn't trying hard enough?

"Quick to anger, quick to forget." The seer said sagely, making Conny clench her fists. "Conny, you have experience with the future. Aleitheas Killory and the Coteriate. You understand that some things are set, and that they cannot be meddled with."

Was Tilda telling her to just leave it all alone? After all of what Conny had done? "Are you just going to ramble? Should I have taken my coat, Matilda?"

"You can be impolite, you know." Tilda turned to face her, her eyes more in the present than Conny had ever seen them. "I shan't take it personally, but please listen."

"I won't listen if you're just going to dick on about what I do and don't understand." She spat in reply, grinding her teeth.

"Charming. Look, I'll cut to the quick. You can't make this connection alone. You need someone else. You need to stop pushing people away, believing yourself above and without them because you've got such a large burden to bear." Tilda said, nervously toying with an earring. "I'm bound by the laws of time. I can't tell you what you need to know, and I'm risking a lot by even saying what I am."

"Well, that's brilliant, you can take your great personal risk and shove it-"

"Conyeri." Tilda silenced her with a hard stare. "For once in your life, listen."

"You've no idea what you're going on about!"

That was it. Tilda sucked in a breath and tried to calm herself, but her voice trembled. "Fine. Don't listen. Let them both die."

Conny stopped dead. Tilda shivered slightly, her hands now shaking. "I am in so much trouble."

"What- you've told me now, why not just-"

"No!" Tilda yelled, her usually quiet voice echoing sharply around the grounds. "Oh, gods… I'm such an idiot… I can't say anything more. I've said too much. Merlin, they'll kill me if they find out… come on! Follow me, we need to go inside."

"What- hey, don't tug so hard!" Conny stumbled over some roots as Tilda ran back towards the castle. "Tilda, stop it! You're crazy!"

"You are not worth dying for, Conyeri." She said through gritted teeth, taking the stairs up to the castle's main double-doors three at a time. Once inside, Tilda didn't stop until she collapsed, panting, on a sofa in the Gryffindor Commons.

"What- pant – was – pant – that for?" Conny wheezed, her vision swimming.

"For someone so very intelligent, you're a right cretin." Tilda said through gasps. "Look. I'm not saying it again. You need to consult. You need to… Circe, euphemisms will be the end of me."

"Then just say it plainly, Tilda."

"Gosh, are you that unintelligent? Remember Avery? Eaten by the giant squid, hunted by Killory, that Avery?" she was getting hysterical, so she lowered her voice and calmed down considerably. "He meddled with the future. He died. That's nothing – do you understand – nothing compared to the penalty that a seer faces if they disclose information that would change the future."

"I don't understand."

"Of course you don't! If you did, I wouldn't have this problem." Tilda had lost her dreamy air, replaced by uncertainty and a shrill, aggressive personality Conny had never seen before. "One day, you'll understand what I mean. One day, you'll understand. You will. But for now, be a damn sight smarter than you're proving yourself to be and follow my advice. Ask. Your. Friends."

"Oh- all right, I guess." Conny cowered, unsure of herself.

"Conyeri. I cannot emphasize this enough, and it may shake your delusion of superiority, but you are worth shit without them. All of them."

The cussword rang wrong from Tilda's mouth. "O- okay, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I will. I'll be good, I promise."

The seer visibly relaxed, sinking into the sofa, looking drained. "God help us if you act this dumb when you save the world in future."

"Nobody said anything about saving the wo-"

"Shut up and go back to the Ravenclaw Tower." Tilda groaned, massaging her forehead. "Your idiocy is making my Inner Eye water."

"Sure. Right. Thank you. I hope you don't die."

"Don't we all, sweetheart." The girl said in a voice that was gravelly and older than the body from which it came. "Don't we all."

Conny rushed off, leaving Tilda behind but nearly sending her twin brother Edwin to the hospital wing by crashing into him on her way back. He gave her an accusing look, as though he somehow knew what had gone on. Conny made a note to read up on psychic twins when she had time. Her anger was broiling just below the surface, but she kept it in check by running through Tilda's words methodically, committing everything to memory. She began to despair as she climbed up to the tower. Everything only raised more questions. Both of them. Two people, she was going to have to save. Who? How? Where? What did her friends know? Just who was Tilda Tirias? Could… a horrible thought occurred to Conny. Could she trust Tilda, who had proven herself a totally different person to how she usually portrayed herself? She could just be a very good actress, playing Conny up into a hype to get her moving, but equally… there was something unsettling about her. She was powerful. Tilda Tirias had a lot of power over Conny. The prophecy, for one thing, but also there was a dependency. The feeling of being played like a chess piece assaulted her as she absentmindedly answered Charlie's riddle, making her uneasy. Chess pieces were only useful until they were taken, and Conny had had a few close scrapes already.

Nobody bothered her as she crossed the Common Room and went quickly through the dressing room to her dorm. Lucy was brushing out her long, straight hair in the mirror. Rebecca Dannat was snoring heavily, as Madam Pomfrey had given her a particularly strong sedative to help her sleep through the night with her allergies. Polly and Anna were in the Common Room catching up on Potions prep.

"Evening, Conny." Lucy said tentatively as Conny shucked off her robes and started undressing.

"Evening." She replied. "Lucy, I need to ask you something. Something serious."

"You haven't reconsidered the whole becoming a lesbian thing, have you? Because if that's the case, I'm sor-"

"No, you twerp." Conny said, smiling weakly. "No, um, it's about this whole… this whole painting thing."

"The whole painting thing? What, you mean the ones you found in the house?"

"It's… it's a bit more than that. I need to find Jon, and I want to talk to both of you."

They found Jon enjoying a cup of tea in his room, but pulled him away from it into the bath cubicle in the ladies' showers. Lucy cast one of her no-hearing spells so they could talk freely.

Conny filled them in about everything, from the very first break-in by Lucius Malfoy at the gallery to what he dad had told her about the paintings and the number seven. It felt cathartic to share it all, but equally, as their frowns began to deepen, Conny felt guilty for offloading her burden on them.

"And you're trying to connect everything." Jon surmised, drumming his fingers on the faucet thoughtfully. "With some piece of information. That we can't find."

"Exactly the problem." Lucy added unhelpfully. "But, on the plus side, it's just two people this time. Last time it was half the school."

"Lucy!" Jon admonished her. "You're an 'orrible person."

"I prefer… er, Conny, what's that word?"

"Pragmatic, babe."

"Aye, pragmatic." Lucy said triumphantly. "Can we just let these two tiny weeny deaths slide? Just this once?"

"Lucy."

She took their unamused faces as instruction enough to abandon that line of thinking. Then, a stroke of brilliance: "Well, we should ask Gil."

"…Gil?"

"Yep. Look, he told us the legend of Caradoc, right? Maybe he'll know something else. He's nutty about Arthurian Legends."

They all looked at Conny, who nodded. "I couldn't hurt."

-0-

"Listen, Gil." Lucy said again, clicking her fingers (Gil was prone to distraction, and Pru had just walked past in short shorts). His head snapped back to Lucy, who was leaning over him looking as threatening as a tiny Arabic girl could, hands on her hips. "Oi, stop ogling her arse and listen!"

"Y-y-okay." He stammered.

"Good. Now, you like History. Correct?"

"Y…yes."

"And you particularly like Arthur and his band of merry knights?"

"Round table, but-" he saw Lucy's expression… "Yes. I like that."

"Then we've got an extra research project for you, Gilderoy." Lucy grinned, obviously enjoying herself. "Conny, good cop."

"Oh- sorry." Conny was busy staring off into the distance. "Um, Gil, it would just be really lovely if you could help us out a bit. It would make me… really happy."

"You don't quite understand the whole 'sexy request' face concept yet, huh, Con?" Lucy cringed. "Anyway, Gilly, my man, we need your expert advice."

"Uh… er, sure, what about?"

"Conny has a table waiting in the library; we'll meet you there with all your books on Arthur and the like in twenty minutes. Bring snacks; this may take all evening."

Gil scampered off once Lucy unpinned him, up to his dorm to get his books. Conny, Lucy and Jon strode out of the Common Room and down to the Library. Once out of earshot, Lucy sort of melted into giggles.

"Hey, remember that show on the tea-vee we watched? I feel like that right now."

"Huh? The Muppet Show, or Dr. Who?"

"No, the one with the three women kicking arse- Charlie's Angels." Lucy grinned. "I feel like we're the Charlie's Angels."

"Only if I get to be Farrah Fawcett." Conny grinned. "The hot one."

"Deal, deal. Jon, you don't mind, do you?"

Jon, who was a pureblood wizard and didn't watch any TV (Conny had introduced Lucy to it and she'd very quickly become addicted), shrugged. "I've been you before Conny, remember, last year? Being a girl isn't so bad, I think."

"Meh. Hush now." They entered the library. Pince was still disapproving of Conny even though she'd cleaned the whole bloody place, so she treaded on eggshells whenever she had to use the library. There was, however, a large rectangular hardwood table in one of the very furthest recesses, totally out of Pince's way. Conny preferred it, because there they could at least talk.

Gil arrived panting a few minutes after they'd set up camp, with a once again calm and distracted-looking Tilda Tirias at his heels. She shared a significant look with Conny, but declined to talk about it. They sat down around what was a sort of perversion of a conference table, with all their research and the awkward silence.

Not one for silences, Lucy spoke. "Right. Ladies and gentlemen, and Gil…"

"Sod off, Lucy."

"Ehem. Anyway, we're here because there is nefarious chicanery afoot." Lucy proudly proclaimed, patting a dictionary that was open next to her hand. "We need to find a link. An important link. If you'd like, we're going to pretend to be- Conny, what're those muggle aurors called who shout and people and wear brown coats?"

"Detectives, babe."

"Yes, we're that."

"I've a question." Tilda raised her hand like a good girl. "Is chicanery the same thing as skullduggery?"

"Er- let me check." Lucy flicked through the thesaurus that was underneath the dictionary. "Yes, it is."

"Okay, thanks."

"Hey- don't distract us! Anyway, right, so… here's the quick lo-down." Lucy proceeded to get all the details out, quickly and succinctly. Though Tilda's expression hardly changed, Gil's eyes got wide and his mouth hung unseemly open.

"Holy Quaffles." Gil breathed after she'd finished, his hands gripped on his favourite book of legends. "That's… crazy. You're not dicking around with me, right?"

"No dicking." Lucy shook her head viciously, stifling giggles. "Um, yes, we're serious. Can you help?"

"I… I dunno." Gil frowned. "I suppose… hang on, I think… I'll be back in a minute."

He whipped out of his seat and disappeared into the bookshelves for a brief moment before returning with a foot-thick, mildew-stricken paving slab of a book. It slammed down on the table, though, Conny thought smugly, no dust was raised.

"So, you brought back one of Conny's holiday novellas." Lucy deadpanned, wrinkling her nose at it. "Any particular reason?"

Gil was getting hyped up. "I think… I think I have your link."

"Already? I was hoping for a research montage." Lucy pouted. "I'm kidding, go."

"Well, I took this out in November, I think, because it has a really complete version of… of Caradoc's legends." He finished feverishly. "Um, and I thought it was funny, because look… look here, on the list of people who took it out… there's also a Caradoc. Caradoc Dearborn."

"So the boy took out a book about his own namesake's legends, nothing strange about that."

"Wait. Wait. See, he took this out in 1970. How old would he have been?"

"Conny?"

"Um, let me remember the roster… he'd have been... a sixth-year."

"Well, anyway… you should look at page two-hundred and forty." Gil hefted the book towards them. Conny carefully prized it open: one condition of her extra Transfig lessons was that she treat Professor McGonagall's books 'like they're my infant children: very carefully, and only with my permission'. After a painstaking twenty-eight seconds, the book opened to page two hundred and forty.

"Ah."

"What? What, lemme see-"

"Lucy, Jon… what does that remind you of?"

On the page, under the heading of 'Inne iye winter mont inne Gwent', was a printing in brown. The small text underneath it disclosed more.

"It's a printing of an… an etching. Done in 1455 by… blah, blah… the etching depicts the castle of Sir Caradoc, in his home kingdom of Gwent. His castle flies the red flags of… I can't pronounce it, it's in ancient welsh. Um, some sort of gathering of all the knights of the round table, along with the King, I think, from the surrounding text."

"And the etching is almost identical to… to the painting. Down to that creepy tree that freaked me out during the holidays, see, the one with the knot that looks like an eye." Lucy gulped and shivered. "Um, right. Oh-kay. So… ugh, my brain won't do it, Conny, go."

Conny sat, quietly, thinking. "Caradoc… shit, I've got it!"

"Easy on the language, babe."

"Shut up. Shut up, Lucy. Oh, gosh, I've got it!"

"Then, why don't you let go of eet, so eet can spill all over ze table and maybe we can get a bit too, non?" Jon said.

"Okay. Okay, I understand, I get it." Conny took a deep breath in. "Look, Caradoc- our Caradoc, not the legendy one – he's a Hogwarts student. A good kid. He paints. I read that- he paints, Art club, all that crap. And he also disappears a few months after You-Know-Who goes bust. He's got a N.E.W.T. in Arithmancy."

"Stating facts is lovely and all, Conny, but-"

"Shut up, Luce." Conny hissed. "Seven paintings. The number freaking seven. We all do Arithmancy; we all know what the number seven means. So would he."

"It's the most powerful magical number, what of it?" Gil asked.

"My dad said that a painting done seven times would make the seventh very powerful- whatever spell you wanted to put on it."

"What spell did our Caradoc put on it?"

"He disappeared. Our Caradoc just poofed away. Not unusual, after the war, but… but what if… what if he… Gods, it made perfect sense in my brain, how it sounds stupid."

"Just tell us." Four voices hissed, all of them leaning forward, on tenterhooks, and Tilda doing very well to pretend she was.

"What if… our Caradoc became the legendary Caradoc? What if he… went into his painting?"

Silence pervaded as everyone processed this conclusion. To Conny, it made sense. Two Caradocs, they must be linked. And they were- through those paintings. It made sense.

"You could be right." Lucy said, nodding furiously, chewing the end of her pencil. "But… where do the multiple Malfoys fit in?"

"Er… I hadn't gotten that far." Conny admitted, sighing. "Bollocks."

"No, come on. Don't give up." Jon affirmed, his gaze set. "Think about eet. Monsieur Malfoy – ze bad one – 'e steals ze painting. Ze painting zat Caradoc is inside."

"You think he's actually inside it?"

"Oui. Remember 'ow I said it felt to look at eet? In ze gallery, ze first time we say eet?"

"You said… it felt like it had history. Like you wanted to just step inside it." Conny remembered.

"Yes. I think zat our Caradoc ees inside eet, being ze Caradoc of legend. And zat Lucius Malfoy wants 'im. To find 'im." Said Jon.

"Right. Where does his disowned squib brother fit in?" Gil asked, almost wetting himself with excitement.

Conny rummaged in her pile of stuff for a second and pulled the yellowing copy of the Daily Prophet with the missing persons' ads out. "I've had this feeling… like Maenalus has been trying to lead people to the fact that his brother stole the painting. See, Caradoc was his friend. Which makes Caradoc a good guy, if he was friends with a squib. Would… would Bad Malfoy be after Caradoc just for being friends with his brother?"

"I dunno why. It isn't usual, unless Caradoc was going to tell the world about the crazy fact that a family of fanatic purebloods disowned a squib." Lucy offered.

"But… the fact still stands." Gil said a little loudly. "Caradoc is in that painting. He's been there… three years now. But you know who's in there too? I bet you my golden snitches that Bad Malfoy went into that painting to find him. Maybe even… to kill him?"

Conny's stomach jolted and her eyes snapped to Tilda. Her words echoed. _Let them both die._ "Er… I agree with Gil."

"That's a first." Lucy chuckled.

"Shut up, I just mean that Caradoc could be in danger. There's no telling how soon Bad Malfoy got into that painting."

"What if 'e already did?" Jon asked quietly, sadly.

"We can't know." Conny said glumly.

"Hang about." Lucy tensed, ideas in her eyes. "Wouldn't it be great if we knew somebody who, say… rubbed shoulders with despicable men like Bad Malfoy? All the time? And perhaps… heard things?"

"That would be great, Luce…" Conny said, "Oh, hang on. Duh, Clarissa Mothley."

"Aye." Lucy stood, her hands brushing the top of her pile of books. "Look, we need to do homework and sleep now. Tomorrow, we reconvene and try Rissa for the info on Malfoy. Okay?"

"Fine." They all stood up. "Lastly… we should keep this to ourselves, I think. If there's anyone you think knows something, ask, but… be careful."

"Speaking from painful personal experience," Conny said, "Messing with dark wizards doesn't usually end with fluffy bunnies and cocoa. I got you guys involved… but if you get hurt, I could never forgive myself."

"Might as well get inducted into the Round Table yourself, Sir DeH, for your chivalry is unmatched." Lucy joked, hefting up her books. "Now, lead us out of the Library before the evil Dragon Pince swoops down upon us!"

Pince coughed from the shadows of a nearby bookcase, causing them all to jump a foot in the air.

"I suggest you leave the Library now, as you are evidently _not working well_." She rasped, her long, spiny fingers curled over a codex of entrapment jinxes.

They scarpered very quickly after that.


	21. Chapter 20

Chapter Twenty: Taxonomica Gigantica

The next day, nobody had any lessons with Rissa. Conny sat through History of Magic, always just on the cusp of expecting Professor Binns to say something boring about Merlin that would suddenly be the key to solving the painting mystery. Unfortunately, no such tidbit came out of Binns's ghostly mouth, and she left the stuffy classroom feeling unfulfilled. Then, Professor Snape took a collective five points off Ravenclaw because she, Lucy and Jon had their top buttons undone in Potions. As if the day couldn't get any more frustrating, Professor Flitwick had summer flu and Professor Atremidus was covering his lesson. She lit all the fires in the classroom, complaining of the 'unseasonal chill' and pulling her cardigan tighter. By the time the class ended, Four Hufflepuffs had passed out of heatstroke without Atremidus noticing, and Conny had sweat more than Corfax up a flight of stairs. Her collar was damp with sweat and she was feeling particularly pissy.

"I can't wait." She hissed at Lucy as they changed into light, summery blouses and shorts. "Where will Rissa be now?"

"Probably in the Slytherin Common Room. Behind the wall in the dungeons, that requires the password." Lucy replied glumly, pulling on a sky-blue paisley-patterned tunic. "No idea how we could get in."

"Maybe we could wait outside, then ask a Slytherin to get her when they go in?"

"No way. They're very protective of the location and password to their common room. And we'd get Rissa in trouble with her house if we go looking."

"Ugh. Snakes are slithery." Conny rolled on deodorant and pulled her hair into a ponytail. "So we have to wait for DADA tomorrow?"

"You could always grow a pair and ask… oh, say, a fourth-year Slytherin boy you know?"

"Shut up about Az; it isn't going to work." Conny said sourly. "You wanna go fly somewhere?"

"In this dress? Not unless you want my arse to get very well acquainted with my broomstick." Lucy deliberated her large collection of Alice bands, eventually deciding that matching colours were in at the moment and so it was perfectly fine to go for a powder-blue headband with sequins. "And anyway, flying will remind you of Az and just make you sadder."

"Tch."

"You need to get over him; why don't you go and talk to that third-year you were eyeing in the speed-dating at Valentine's? Whassis name, Peter?"

"Ugh, no way. He was cute until he opened his mouth, totally wierdo." Conny grabbed a book and a jersey in case it got cold. "Let's get out of the castle, I'm melting."

"Seems funny to think that just four months ago you were risking your life to fix the boiler." Lucy chuckled as they left the dorm. "Speaking of that, ever since that night my wand has been temperamental."

"Temperamental? What, like it gets PMS or something?" Conny asked, pulling her own wand out of her pocket. The sliding pieces of the puzzle box pattern on the handle had been awfully hard to shift as of late.

"Nah, just… y'know, being a bit glitchy. Some spells too strong, others too weak, stunning when I want to repair, that sort of thing." Lucy's wand was much longer and made of lighter wood. Its handle was decorated with hieroglyphics; probably suitable, as Lucy was half- Egyptian.

"Hey, can I hold yours a minute?" Conny asked.

"Er… um, I suppose." Lucy handed it over as they left the Common Room. "You're not fullblood, so you might not know, but it's a pretty… well, it's not the done thing to ask for another wizard or witch's wand."

"Sorry. I'll keep that in mind." Conny held the two wands out in front of her. They looked so different, and yet… and yet the felt very similar. What did that say about what sorts of people she and Lucy were? When she moved them close together, little white sparks flickered in and out of existence in the air between them.

"Can I have my wand back now?" Lucy whined, suddenly twitchy. "I feel insecure without it."

"Sure." Conny handed it back. There was a mass migration from the common rooms through the entrance hall and to the grounds, considering the weather was being so gracious. The only problem was finding an area of the grounds that another group didn't have dibs on- trees and hills were usually nabbed by large groups of sixth- or seventh- years. Conny and Lucy found their second-year friends on the large, rickety jetty that let out onto the lake. The low, warm sun made the lake look like a giant pink mirror to the sky. Conny absentmindedly thought that she should go get Az, because he'd love the view. Maybe write a poem about it.

"No!" She stopped herself. She shouldn't think about him! Bad Conny!

"D'ye particularly deplore of ladybirds?" Rosie McAvery asked. A wobbly chalk circle had been drawn on a plank near where they were sitting. Rosie and Mark Arrit had apparently enlarged two ladybirds and they were having a sort of wrestling match.

"Er, no, forget that I said anything." Conny sat. "Who's the seed?"

"Rosie's, of course, she picked an aggressive one." Corfax said. "I think we should try barnacles next; ladybirds are boring."

Conny's half-muggle upbringing proved itself useful. "Did you know that barnacles have the highest penis to body size ratio in the whole animal kingdom?"

"What?" Corfax asked, aghast.

"Yep. And, as I remember, they have both sets of… sexy bits." She giggled. "Fax, you're muggleborn, you must have done biology at primary school."

"Er… yes, but I was never very academic." He admitted. "Hang on, you went to muggle primary school?"

"Of course I did." Conny replied, perplexed."

"Wait, you guys went to a school before Hogwarts?" Rosie asked, suddenly less interested in the wrestling ladybirds.

"Yes. Why, you guys didn't?"

"Oh, no." Rosie, Lucy and Bill all shook their heads.

"Then… how do you learn English and maths and stuff?" Fax asked.

"Um, you don't, really. Well, me parents taught me some things, but yeh're just left to do if for yerself." Rosie said.

"Seriously?" Corfax whistled under his breath. "I suffered for years in muggle primary school, getting my head stuck down grotty toilets and my packed lunch stolen… when my dad remarried, they were going to send me to a board at secondary school."

"I didn't have such a bad time."

"Yeh, but Conny, you live in a nice part of London. I bet your school was nice, too." Said Lucy.

"Mmm… I suppose. The catchment area was mixed, but I enjoyed it. I liked being involved in things, though I suppose it was hard sometimes to keep from all the others that I was a witch." Conny smiled at a memory. "When my dad came in for parents' evenings, all my teachers would think he was so weird. Tartan waistcoats aren't apparently the correct dress for a man in his forties."

"I like your dad's waistcoat." Lucy pouted.

"Aye, but what tartan was it, hmm?" Rosie asked, her Scottish-ness rearing. "I'd betcha all the galleons in Inverness that yer father was wearing the tartan of a clan he doesn't even belong to."

"Oh gosh, what a terror. Maybe he was wearing hunting tartan on a Sunday, too… shocking. Burn him, I say!" Lucy giggled, not noticing that Rosie was frowning at her and obviously didn't find that too funny.

"Anyway," Conny cleared her throat. "Anyone want to skip stones?"

"No way, you _always_ cheat."

-0-

"Now, my dears, about your summer exam…" Professor Atremidus cooed from her oversized chair, a cup of milky tea steaming on her desk. The class groaned. "Don't be like that, my pumpkins. Now… where was I?"

"Letting us go early?" Lucy piped up hopefully.

"No, no… ah, yes, summer exam. There will be a paper, just to check that you've all been paying attention… and then a practical."

"Practical?" Lucy whispered to Conny, looking worried. "God, she's not going to curse someone with Moroccan Mucocytosis and then get us to cure them, is she?"

"If she does, I'm hoping it's Max." Conny replied, and they both turned to Max Borridge, who was picking his nose near the door. "I would fail the exam just to make sure he gets those permanent mucus-filled warts on his face."

"You're a git, Conny."

"A righteous git."

Atremidus cleared her throat. "The practical examination will involve diagnosing and administering the correct cure for a range of magical afflictions."

"Awesome." The murmur went around the class. "Of course, it will only be those appropriate to your second-year syllabus, my dears. No Eternal Sneezing Diseases for you!"

"Oh, the disappointment." Lucy joked, "I had no reason to live but Eternal Sneezing Diseases!"

"You're an arse, Lucy."

"A righteous arse." Lucy countered, "Touché."

"Arse."

"Git."

A bell rang in the distance for the end of the lesson. "Right, you go front, I'll go back, we need to isolate and confront."

"Lucy, we're not a SWAT team."

"But they look so cool in muggle movies!"

"C'mon, she's leaving." They shoved their books into their bags and set off in pursuit of Rissa, who moved fluidly through the crowd of Ravenclaws and Slytherins. "Merlin, she's fast."

"'Scuse me! Sorry! Pardon me!" Conny very politely pushed her way through the chatting group that filled the corridor. Lucy, who'd never had the whole 'P's & Q's' talk, went more with the 'get out of my way or I shove you' approach. This worked well, and soon they'd caught up with their target.

"Clarissa." Lucy panted, hooking their arms together much to Rissa's obvious discomfort. "Trying to slip away there, hmm?"

"There is no law prohibiting me from moving between destinations quickly." She replied flatly. "What do you want, Lucelia?"

"Your use of my full name hurts my soul, Riss." Lucy pretended to cry. "We need your help."

"With what?"

"Secret."

"You will probably need to tell me what it is you require help with before I can actually help you." She pointed out stiffly. "And kindly disengage your arm."

"Rissa." Conny said from her other side, startling the Slytherin slightly, who'd been occupied with Lucy. "What do you know about Lucius Malfoy?"

Rissa raised a pale eyebrow. "You are still pursuing this?"

"Yep. You led us to the squib brother, and we need your pureblood social club information."

"Ask away."

"Have you seen Lucius Malfoy recently?"

Rissa nodded.

"Er… expound, please."

"He attended the House of Karov's Spring Equinox Gala, with his wife and young son, yes."

"Was he all happy and fulfilled, or sort of angry and depressed?"

"What do you mean?"

"Was he boasting about anything? Being all 'I'm awesome'?" Conny asked.

Rissa considered it. "No, I would say he was the reverse. He mostly talked quietly with various people, and looked worried and… rushed is the best word. He had just come back from a holiday to India, and the heat had not agreed with him, he said. You know, Lucy, he attended with your youngest brother."

"Alexi? What was he doing with Alexi at a pureblood gala? We're not House of Karov. I think we're… House of Akhet."

"He was evidently a guest. I do not know beyond that."

"This is encouraging," Lucy noted, "It means that he hadn't had any luck with… the thingy yet at Easter, so we're still in time."

"You can talk about the paintings in front of me, Lucelia." Rissa said off-handedly, causing Lucy to stub her toe and swear colourfully. "I am not stupid."

"Never said you were…" Lucy grumbled. "Eesh, does anyone not know all of our business?"

"I assure you that I have kept the matter under strictest confidence."

"Brill. So, you got anything else on Malfoy?"

"Hmmm… I suppose I thought it was strange that he was so angry, but kept your brother so very close. Perhaps Alexi was rendering services?"

"Services? You make him sound like a builder or a carpet-fitter." Lucy pouted, "Please, give a master criminal his due."

"Do excuse me. I was being euphemistic; perhaps Malfoy had engaged your family's criminal syndicate in some sort of nefarious exercise."

"That's better. So, you think that my brothers are involved in Malfoy's plans?"

"I would… It is a reasonable supposition."

"Reasonable supposition is good enough for me. But this is good, it means we've still got time." Something dawned on Lucy. "And it means that my brothers made the spell that's going to get Malfoy into the painting. Which means that I might be able to see how they did it."

"How?" Conny asked, "You can't get home."

"You underestimate me, babe." Lucy winked, taking in a loud breath as they left the stuffy castle and emerged onto the grounds. "Ugh, an hour in a sweaty greenhouse? I'd rather kiss a toad. Hang on, Riss, that isn't the cue for you to make a joke again."

"How droll." Rissa snapped, pulling her dragonhide gloves out of her bag. "I hear the mandrakes are hungover today; it makes them prone to biting, so I suggest gloves."

"Gotcha." They entered the greenhouse, surprised to find it rather chilled out. "Whoa."

"Apparently the mandrakes had a massive party and trashed the humidifiers." Polly greeted them, looking very serene. "Sprout has been going spare, apparently we have to clean up their vomit."

"Yey for plants."

"Don't be that way. If we had some petrified people, these mandrakes would be key to their recovery." Polly replied, affronted.

"Well, we don't have any petrified people I know of, so ixnay on the vomit for me." Lucy hopped up onto a dirty planting table and crossed her legs, leaning against the glass. She stretched her arms languidly and began to work the kinks out of her muscles.

"I see that Lucy is above such things as vomit." Ralphus sneered from where he was getting Derek and Feol to do his share of the work.

"Hypocrite." Lucy flipped him the finger lazily. "Hey, Ralph, since I'm not doing anything and neither are you, maybe you'd like to share my seat? There's room for two if we sit… close."

Ralphus blushed bright pink and mumbled some cusswords before suddenly finding a puddle of vomit on the other side of the room to deal with. Lucy chuckled and grinned, quite pleased with herself.

"You're a git, Luce."

"Why did I never think about this before? He's powerless against my wiles!"

"Be careful." Conny warned, deciding she was sagely enough in the ways of the heart to offer advice. Lucy blew as raspberry and proceeded to file her nails for the whole of the Herbology lesson. Professor Sprout, bless her, was much too busy to check on them, as she had a planter full of groaning, hungover mandrakes in need of glasses of water and Alka Seltzer. Conny and Rissa therefore spent a difficult but relatively cool hour cleaning up the debris from the mandrakes' party. When they were done, they stank of mandrake sick and bleach, but Lucy was totally unmarred and had very symmetrical fingernails.

"So, I have a plan." Lucy said at dinner (seafood) later that day.

"Go for it." Conny said through a mouthful of absolutely delicious squid. "Oh, this is divine. Have some."

"No way. I don't eat anything with suckers." Lucy said, ironically shoveling octopus sushi into her mouth. "Anyway, my master plan."

"Yes, yes, go on."

"So. I figure that Malfoy hasn't had any success getting at our Caradoc yet. But, equally, he was acting close to Alexi, so whatever my brothers did for him worked. So, I think it's fair to assume that he's got into the painting, but for some reason he can't get at our Caradoc."

"That seems sensible to think." Conny agreed, eying some prawns near Jon. "So, when does the plan come in?"

"I'm getting to it. I think that we need to save Caradoc."

Conny nearly choked on her mouthful. "Er… Luce, Malfoy's a paroled Death Eater, Caradoc is clearly a competent wizard of… twenty-eight, by now. I'm sure they can duel it out."

"But… but what about the thing Tilda hold you?" Lucy lowered her voice. "You know, the whole '_Let them both die_' thing?"

"I figure it's both. You know, like Malfoy and Caradoc. That's two; they're the 'both'."

"That's bull. From what you said… Tilda was emotional when she said that. She's a Gryffindor. I don't think she was talking about saving Malfoy."

"Then who? Not Maenalus, he's in muggle prison for stealing the seventh painting."

"I dunno. Someone. Someone… someone important to both Malfoy and Caradoc. Hence the conflict." Lucy proposed shyly, obviously not confident in her idea.

"A girl."

"That's it. I think… I mean, Caradoc doesn't seem like the selfish type… He was protecting someone."

Conny nodded. "The question now is… who was important to both of them? In fact, Maenalus as well."

She and Lucy very briefly thought in silence, the only sound a sizzling halibut that Olivia Teppit was gingerly eyeing a few feet away. Then, Conny thought of something. "Hang on. I have a hunch."

"I disagree; you walk fine."

"Funny, Luce. But I think I know where we can find the girl."

"Fire away, captain."

"It's not going to be that easy. We need access to the student roster in the restricted section."

"You think the girl was a student?" Lucy asked, grabbing Jon by the ear as they left. "Eesh… the restricted section isn't going to be easy to get into. Even if you get a slip, Pince goes and fetches the book for your rather than let you in. Conny's an anomaly, being allowed in."

"Then we go in the hard way. Sneaky sneaky."

"Taking stupid risks? How unlike you." Lucy jibed, a wide grin on her face and excitement in her eyes.

"No idea how we'll manage it." Conny hummed as they climbed up through the castle. "I wish we had some sort of… invisibility cloak, or something."

"Well, we don't." Lucy replied. "We'll need to go at high morning. Four or five, when the patrols are really tired. Boris mentioned something about a secret passage the other week when… well, never mind when. I'll ask him."

"I'll go get some clothes together. I know where the roster is, we just need to be in and out." They split up as they entered the Common Room; Lucy made a beeline for Boris and his mates in the corner; Conny went up to her dorm, and Jon, thinking of something important, dashed off.

-0-

The reconvened in the Common Room at four A.M.

"We look so badass." Lucy grinned, dressed all in black. "Whatchu got there, Jon?"

"I was thinking about what you said about wanting an invisibility cloak."

"Who have an invisibility cloak?"

"Non." Jon shook his head; Lucy visible deflated. "But I do 'ave… zees."

He took from his pocket three rustic-looking bracelets. They were strangely translucent, and Conny thought they were woven from some sort of see-through plaited hair.

"What are they?"

"Ze hair of ze Demiguise." Jon said proudly. "My father gave zem to me in case I was ever targeted because of 'is job, but I think zey have a better use 'ere."

"They're like… invisibility bracelets?"

"Ish. Zey do not give invisibility like a cloak, but zey make you less… what iz ze word?"

"Conspicuous." Conny offered, to which Jon agreed.

"With zem on, you blend into ze shadows, or ze crowd, et cetera. Zey aren't perfect, but… aurors use zem, so I figure zey must have proven to work, non?"

Lucy and Conny took one each and held them up to the light. "So awesome. We're like ninjas."

Lucy frowned, not understanding. "What's a ninja?"

"Ancient Japanese Hit-Wizard."

"Ah; thanks."

"No prob." Conny slipped hers on. She felt sort of… insubstantial, like she'd float away if she wasn't careful. Whatever it was, it was a very weird feeling. "Whoa."

"Yep." Lucy grinned, her white teeth the only clearly visible part of her. It wasn't that Lucy was invisible; more like Conny's eyes just forgot to look at her. It was as though Lucy just faded from significance… like it wasn't important to consider her. "This is really freaky, Jon. Just how dangerous is it to be you?"

"Tres dangerous." He gave up a rare smile. "Shall we go?"

"Oh, yes." The three of them slipped out of the Common Room and were gone before Charlie could recognize them. The school was creepy at night, though Conny had never really had a problem since she'd spent the whole of her first year roaming around, unable to sleep. She kept thinking that Lucy and Jon had disappeared, even though they were just behind her.

"Lord this is creepy." She whispered as a pair of Hufflepuff prefects strode right past them without noticing. "Is this how you've been stealing food, Jon?"

"Maybe."

They crept downstairs, relying on Conny's excellent memory of the school's secret passages to get them to the Library. In her Carom boots, she moved quickly and silently, able to jump from shadow to shadow with ease, or scramble up archways or doorframes to peer around corners from the eaves. The Grey Lady floated through a wall on the fourth floor, alarming them, but only stopped to warn them that Filch was lurking next to the magenta tapestry a corridor over. They thanked her and Conny helped Lucy and Jon climb up to a shaded balcony where they pressed themselves into the corner while Filch grumbled and staggered around, holding his lantern high.

Once sure he was out of sight, Conny jumped down and caught Lucy, who barely weighed anything, and then they both had to catch Jon since he was a bit heavier.

"Uff." He grunted as Conny and Lucy failed to fully take his weight and he fell hard on his ankle. "Ow, ow, merde."

"Are you okay?"

"Fine, fine. No problem." He winced as he put weight on his ankle. "I'll be fine."

"Sure."

"Yes, sure. Let's go, we're wasting time." Jon said, hobbling off with a grimace towards the Library. Conny and Lucy shared a worried look before following him.

The Library was, if possible, even quieter and creepier than it was during the day. The lights from the Library's long, thin slitted windows left dancing motes of dust and moonbeams glancing off the shining bookcases that Conny had put so much effort into cleaning. The cordoned-off Restricted section beckoned menacingly.

"Right. Jon, you're on east, Lucy's on west, the signal is that whistling noise."

"Aye-aye."

They split up, Conny making a beeline for the cordon and stooping under it. Bookcases towered over her, but she quickly found her way to the table upon which the roster sat; opened still at the page of D names she'd checked last time. She quickly and silently flicked the pages until she got to M.

"Hope I'm right…" she muttered to herself, running a finger down the list of names. "Malfoy… Malfoy… there's Lucius, no, up… Brutus…"

She'd come to the top of the page and flicked back over. Surely enough, at the bottom of the next page were two other entries.

Abaraxs, Malfoy… and there, below him, was a large burn-mark, covering the entry of a student. It must be a Malfoy, because it was in the middle of a great slew of other Malfoys, but it had been totally obscured. Someone- probably Lucius, the last Malfoy to attend Hogwarts – had scoured the existence of that member of his family.

"Gotcha." Conny grinned. "You're not Maenalus- he'd never have gone here because he was a squib, so you must be… you must be the link."

A high-pitched whistled snapped Conny out of her musings. Alarmed, she leapt up atop a nearby bookcase, and then ran along the top until she found some shadows to crouch in. Professor Snape was swooping in, Filch at his heels, definitely looking for someone, the greasy yellow of his lantern swinging about the bookcases. Lucy had made the whistle; she was trying to make herself as small as possible in a dead end of the Bestiary section, but it was fruitless; she wasn't invisible.

Thinking fast, she pulled the demiguise hair bracelet off and tucked it down her shirt. Filch and Snape rounded the corner and saw her, backed into a corner, and gave startled snarls. "Told you we'd find one."

Lucy, to her credit, drew on a large amount of her reserve calmness and coolness to cock a hip and cross her arms. "Evening, Professor."

"As wonderful as it is to see you, Miss Ra, I do believe you are out of bed."

"Seeing is believing." She replied. Filch's face was making ugly contortions, his bloodshot eyes popping. He was obviously not used to a student talking back, and Lucy was no deer in the headlights.

"How clever." Snape said curtly. Lucy was very good at potions- much better than Conny, at least, so he didn't hate Lucy quite as much. Plus Conny's Cat had mauled his face last year, so that wasn't helping. "What were you looking for?"

"Oh, you know, some early morning reading. _Taxonomica Gigantica _looks like a hoot."

"It's riveting. Thirty points from Ravenclaw and a week's detention."

Lucy groaned, but recovered. "That sounds great. Can you do Friday?"

Snape, past the point of mild amusement, scowled at her. "I will enjoy watching you scrub grime-caked cauldrons."

"Grime cakes? You love them too?"

Snape made an evil sound in his throat, Filch practically apoplectic beside him, a vein almost bursting on his balding forehead.

"You are not helping your case, Miss Ra."

Lucy noncommittally shrugged, whistling merrily. Conny suddenly realized that she was saying 'get the hell out of here while I'm distracting them'. Conny, quiet as she could, edged down from the bookcase and fell to the floor with an unfortunate thump.

"What was that?" Filch asked loudly. Conny couldn't see him now, and felt very threatened.

"Go and check; where you find one, others are sure to be scattered around." Snape spat. "As for you, Miss Ra, we will see how chipper you remain after my gift to you of Professor Slughorn's unwashed Boil solution cauldrons from nineteen forty-nine."

"Forty-nine was a great year for French chardonnay."

"And evidently a terrible year for Boil solutions. I expect you in my office after supper tomorrow."

"It's a date."

"I will not have you speak that way to me, Miss Ra." Snape said, his voice cold. Conny snapped out of it and slunk around a bookcase, ensuring that the roaming Filch didn't find her.

"Fine. I shan't." Lucy replied tartly. "See you tonight, Professor."

Snape made a disgruntled noise and Lucy sounded like she stomped past him, turned and left out of the other side door.

"Kids these days eh?" Filch complained. "Didn't find nothing around there. Since Pince got that girl to clean the whole place, I can't see footprints in the dust anymore."

"Hmm." Snape paused. "Strange that Miss Ra was here without her cadre- DeHayersae and Lucwitt. You take the east door, I will get the west. Perhaps we can catch the rats leaving the sinking ship."

Conny, alarmed, ran for the east door, Filch wheezing and clanking behind her. He was an unfit man in his fifties; she was a spry thirteen-year-old with a partial invisibility bracelet and a pair of magical boots. There really wasn't a great deal of competition between them; Conny slipped out of the door before Filch had even rounded the corner of the bookcase containing volumes on Magical Trichology.

With her Carom Boots, Conny leapt down corridors at breakneck speeds, easily outstripping anybody trying to follow her. She slammed the door of the Ravenclaw Tower shut, panting but thankful.

Lucy was waiting on a sofa, grinning like the Cheshire cat.

"You look happy for thirty points and a week of Snapey detention." Conny puffed, collapsing next to her. "Jon'll be up in a moment; he doesn't have super-boots."

"Good. Now that, Conny, was step 2 of my master plan."

"We're back at the master plan?"

"We never left the master plan, babe." Lucy beamed, stretching. "See, I go to Snape's detention and I act up. Way up. So, in the end, he sends me to Flitwick. And I act up to Flitwick. And then, he-"

"Suspends you." Conny realized, her eyes widening. "And you go home and find out how your brothers managed to get Malfoy into the painting!"

"Excellent powers of deduction." Basil Fronsac muttered, yawning, from his portrait on the Common Room wall.

"Thanks, Bazza." Lucy gave him a thumbs-up. "So, I'll get a week suspension and be back for the Gryffindor-Ravenclaw match. That's the end of May. We'll have all of June to get in and save our Caradoc."

"That is if we can work the spell."

"You'll manage it; you always do."

Jon barreled into the Common Room, panting, looking fairly sick.

"You look like you snogged a troll, Jon, are you all right?"

"Filch… chasing… 'ad to 'ide… boys bathroom." He gasped. "'E came in after me… I hid under ze grate by ze sinks."

"Where all the pipes full of crap are?" Lucy shuddered. "Well, top marks for effort."

"Welcome back Jon. You smell." Conny offered.

"Shuttup. Did you learn what you wanted to?" He flopped down on an armchair opposite, which quite rudely made a gagging sound and promptly threw him off.

"Well, I know who the girl is."

"You do!?" The both exclaimed.

"Well, I know she was a witch, and a sister of Lucius and Maenalus Malfoy." Conny said proudly. "Her entry in the roster has been burned off by dark magic. I think that Bad Malfoy had a witch sister who, when the war came, sided with Good Malfoy."

Basil cleared his throat. "Why didn't you ask me?"

"Erm…" They looked up at him. "Your portrait is in the Ravenclaw Common Room, Basil. We're dealing in Slytherins and Hufflepuffs, aren't we?"

He looked offended. "I have several other portraits around the castle. I was an important man, once. I happen to divide time between this portrait, and others on the third and seconds floor. I also have one in the dungeons."

"Really?"

"Yes. And I can tell you, my dear, that Caradoc Dearborn spent almost all of his time with Althea Malfoy."

That was it. Althea Malfoy. The girl.

"It fits! She's Maealus's sister and Caradoc's girlfriend. But she's also Lucius's sister, and I bet he wasn't happy when a Hufflepuff got her, or when she decided to go against You-Know-Who in the war. I bet… I think that she and Caradoc escaped into the painting with Maenalus's help!"

"Holy Circe." Lucy swore, sinking into the sofa. "Lucius wants to get his sister back. Actually, scratch that… they've been there four years. I reckon that Malfoy wants to get rid of their child, too."

"You think they had kids?"

"I'd bet my last knut on it." Lucy nodded. "We have to get in there. Caradoc and Althea might know what Bad Malfoy looks like… they can avoid him or fight him off. A four-year-old child can't."

The three sat in heavy silence as dawn began to light up the Common Room. Well, they were all thinking, we'd best get going.

_Cell Forty-Seven, Azkaban Prison, North Sea_

_Dear Khai,_

_I'm about to do something very stupid. Please know that I have to. When you get back, things will be better. You'd never hit me like Ali or Jah or Lex. I know you love me. I love you too, Khai… but I miss you so bad sometimes. I know I can get you out, I know I can, and I will. I think I know a way I can get you out earlier, but if that doesn't work, I'll demand the retrial when I'm of age. So you have a maximum of four years left. Please keep hoping._

_I still don't have that owl. After when I'm about to do, I know none of my other brothers will give it to me. But, please, Khai, I really need one. The school owls are okay, but I really want my own one._

_I love you Khai._

_Love,_

_Lucy_


	22. Chapter 21

Chapter Twenty-One: Lucy Turns Heads

Lucy wasted no time in getting herself suspended. The only problem was that teachers didn't really seem in the mood to get involved. She actually called Snape a git to his face, but all he did was give her another putrid cauldron to scrub. She had to deliberately break his favourite jar of pickled salamander eyes before he even looked up from grading mock potions exams, and abuse him for another three nights before, one-hundred and thirty points away from Ravenclaw later, Snape sent her to Flitwick, disgusted. Flitwick sighed and gave her more detention, so Lucy said some rude things about goblins (it was well-known that Flitwick was part-goblin) and about short people (it was pretty evident that Flitwick was short) before he totally flipped out on her, and suspended her pending further disciplinary action.

Conny waited anxiously all week for Lucy to return. She tried to force herself to study for their exams, which were only two weeks away, but ended up short-circuiting her mind and giving herself a case of Brainblank that took Professor Atremidus several days to create a cure for. By the time Conny could remember how to tie her shoelaces or what her middle name was, rumours about Lucy had turned wild without her there to quell them.

A few people knew the whole Snape and Flitwick debacle, but everyone else invented ever more fanciful reasons. Boris sadly told his mates that she'd been caught dealing something; Polly and Anna were convinced that Lucy had tried to rape Professor Quirrell, Luke and Ally muttered about Lucy being caught looking up dark curses. The prevalent view of the first-year Hufflepuffs was that Lucy had been breeding an army of genetically modified fanged puffskeins. Being a member of the Ra dynasty, most of the tall tales were told with hushed excitement, even a bit of adulation. Lucy was on her way to becoming a legend.

Conny foolishly mentioned to Anna over dinner that Lucy was arriving back on Friday night, just before the last Quidditch match of the term, which was on Saturday morning. The whole school seemed to be conveniently loitering in and around the Entrance Hall when she got back.

It didn't help that her youngest brother, Alexi, escorted her into the Hall. Third-years and above recognized him; he left Hogwarts the year Lucy arrived, and was a bit of a celebrity. It also didn't help that he was devilishly handsome.

Flitwick came to meet them. "So… good to see you, Mr. Ra." He said slightly skittishly.

"Professor." Alexi inclined his head. "I would like to express the deepest condolences on behalf of myself and the rest of Lucy's family. Her behaviour was unacceptable… she has been reprimanded and will not do anything like this again."

Flitwick nodded. "Well, we did decided that, as it was Lucy's first transgression, we'd let it go just this once."

"How kind. Lucy has a letter of apology to you and to Professor Snape." Alexi rested his hand on her shoulder, and Lucy winced, as though in great pain. "Be good, Lucy."

"Yes sir." She said demurely. Alexi turned on he heels and strode out of the Hall, nothing but the squeak of his immaculately-polished shoes belying that he was ever there. The Hall watched and waited.

"Perhaps you should go up to your room, Lucy." Flitwick said kindly. She silently handed him a thick letter, the name on the front in dark red ink, and walked through the very centre of the Hall. Bystanders parted like the Red Sea for Moses, and Conny only joined her once she'd walked out of sight.

Lucy directed her into a disused classroom on the first floor before stopping. When she stopped, she promptly collapsed.

"Oh gods… Lucy, what's wrong?"

"Urgh…. Nn!" Lucy clenched her teeth, her hands shaking. With great care, she unbuttoned her coat, each button another gasp of pain, until she was leaning against the wall almost screaming. The coat fell away; Lucy was only wearing a vest underneath, and very visible, gleaming, discoloured from her collarbone downwards were bruises, burns and cuts. The bruising was the most worrying, still red and black with freshness, though the burns suppurated and the cuts wept.

"C… C-C-Conn…" She spluttered, totally falling apart. "F-F-Fu… rgh!"

"Don't talk." Conny said, shaking, her eyes spasming with the horror. "I'll get Madam Pomfrey."

"No!" Lucy grabbed her wrist, practically having a fit with the effort. "Atremidus. Get her."

"Why?" Conny asked before she realized what she was doing. "Okay, I'll go. Stay here."

"No." Lucy shook her head, frightened. "Her… office."

"Lucy, you can barely walk!"

"Shuttup." Lucy tried to pull herself up using a desk. She succeeded, if only barely, groaning and wheezing with the effort. "You got… your boots?"

Conny blinked, but rummaged in her bag for her Carom Boots. She didn't know why she had them on her; they'd just sort of ended up there. "I do, but what difference will it make?"

"They… they make you f-f-fly. One…person… ten times the force. You like the… m-m-maths…"

"One person with ten times the force… or two people with five times the force! I can carry you!"

"Give the… girl a… p-p-prize." Lucy wheezed. Conny changed shoes with the alacrity of terror behind her and hefted Lucy up, bridal-style. It was hard, but Lucy was a waif of a girl and Conny was already well into her growth spurt. Lucy, with trouble, fastened her free had around Conny's neck as she peeked out of the room.

"Everyone's in Supper." Conny reasoned, and ran into the deserted corridor. Luckily enough, Atremidus never ate supper on a Friday; something about the greasiness of the fish and chips didn't sit well with her. Conny found that the Carom Boots did indeed make it easier to move; she couldn't leap around like she did by herself, but she could easily run without getting tired; they gave her extra spring in her step. Conny ran up the stairs to the second floor, where Professor Atremidus's office was. Barreling down the door rather unceremoniously, she came upon the Professor taking tea with a book.

"Professor." She said rather uselessly, looking at Atremidus imploringly. "She's hurt, Professor. Badly."

The change was amazing. Doris Atremidus went from being a doddery old lady to a powerful, competent Healer. She stood up, straightened her glasses, and took out her wand.

"Put her on the bed." She ordered, summoning a book from the shelf above her desk. "Do you know what might have happened?"

"I think…" Conny looked at Lucy's glassy eyes, and the sheen of sweat on her brow. "I think her brothers beat her, Professor."

Atremidus nodded tersely, running her wand over Lucy's chest and head. "Internal bleeding… evidence of the Cruciatus curse… looks like some lacerations there too… but I'm not familiar with these burns." Atremidus opened the book to a well-worn page. "Broken ribs I think, too. I can cure these all, though I don't know about the burns."

Conny looked at them, some familiarity stirring inside her. Then she remembered; one of her leaders in Brownies had similar ones. "They're cigarette burns, Professor, from someone stubbing one out on the skin."

"I see. Well, I'll need you to help me." She looked at Lucy, who was muttering and wincing, her fingers twitching. "Go get those bulbous roots on my desk, and the two vials by my knitting- the green and the pink."

Conny busied herself gathering the things she was asked for, while Atremidus made long, lengthwise sweeps of Lucy's body, frowning deeper all the while. She felt terrible. Lucy had got herself suspended, knowing… knowing full well what her brothers would do to her. To help with their harebrained plan? To save some lost wizard and his girlfriend in a painting? Stupid. So. Bloody. Stupid.

She held onto the things she's gotten patiently, while Atremidus tried to talk to Lucy.

"Lucelia." She said loudly. "Lucy. Look at me." Lucy weakly turned her head. "Good. This will hurt."

"Hurt?" She said, smiling weakly. "I hurt already."

"Don't be alarmed at the sensation, dear… _costrum emendo!_"

Lucy swore very loudly, startling Atremidus's snoozing ginger tabby cat. "You could have... ng… warned me!"

"I did. Be quiet." Atremidus next took one of the bulbous roots and split it open, revealing a hollow centre of faintly yellow juice. "Drink."

"It looks… like piss."

"Tastes like it too, but it'll make you feel better. Conyeri, you help Lucy drink this, I need to cast a desanguination charm and a whole raft of others."

Conny, much to Lucy's disgust, tipped liquid from the bulbous root into her mouth. "Professor… won't desanguination… take away her blood?"

"Lucy is bleeding internally. I need to remove the blood, or it can compress organs. In the worst cases, haemorrhagic shock can lead to death and brain damage."

"I'd take the b-brain shit over the death, if you can… manage that." Lucy croaked between sips.

"I've already told you to be quiet." Atremidus scolded. Conny vengefully made Lucy take a whole gulp of the root juice.

"Will she be okay, Professor?"

"Oh, of course. I'm the world's best healer. A little sore for a couple of days, but she'll recover fine. I just worry… if a Healer isn't around next time it happens."

Atremidus and Conny shared a look. There was something that Conny recognized, something… she couldn't put her finger on it.

"The green potion should be taken in two hours. The pink in a day. Let me just clean up these- _Vulnera Sanentur_! And these, _Tergeo_!"

The two spells sealed Lucy's cuts and healed up her burns. The bruising was still there, but Conny could see it starting to turn green at the edges; something about the potion was evidently speeding up the healing process. Lucy looked relatively more relieved, her eyes closed, breathing shallow, pained breaths, but they were an improvement on ragged pants and screams of pain. Atremidus drew the curtain to separate her from the rest of her office and took Conny aside.

"What exactly happened, Conyeri?" She asked, the spark of purpose beginning to drain from her. She sat down tiredly at her desk with her mug of tea.

"She… well, you know Lucy was suspended. She was away for a week… obviously her brothers didn't like that. She kept it together until we were out of sight of the rest of the students… and then collapsed. She asked for you."

"She knew I was the best… she knew what I did."

"What's that, Professor?"

Atremidus gave a weak smile. "I think you know. Lucy figured it out."

Conny glanced at the paper on the desk. Reports. Hang on… that handwriting… "You cured the incurable! You made the potion that saved Lucy!"

"That I did. It was within my abilities… and when her brothers approached me, I couldn't help but try. Lucy is badly brought up, but… we all deserve our second chances."

"And they gave you money." Conny pointed out, remembering the conversation between the brothers. "Lots of it."

Atremidus regarded her with scrutiny, but decided not to pry. "Yes. A great deal of money… A Healer's pension isn't spectacular. With what they gave me, I can afford to live comfortably until I die."

"So you're leaving?"

"Of course." Atremidus sniffed. "I _despise_ children."

"But… but you made us tea and called us your pumpkins!" Conny protested, much to Atremidus's amusement. "You… you really hate us?"

"I have been surrounded by people who want my help for over sixty years now. I want time for myself… I was just doing Dumbledore a favour; he did cite me in his discovery of the fourth use of dragon's blood, which really started my career."

"Oh. Well, thank you, Professor. You've done so much to help… I can't really do anything in return."

"You can, Conyeri." Atremidus said seriously. "I… I feel for Lucelia. She is a conflicted child. I want you to promise me that you'll be there for her. Whether it's a hug or somewhere to stay, I want you to look out for her. Be a good influence."

Atremidus's words stirred a longing feeling of sisterhood in Conny's chest; she looked over to the curtains, behind which Lucy drifted in and out of consciousness. She would. She really, really would do everything she could. The realization shocked her a bit; she'd never felt so strongly about anything in the whole world before. In that moment, Conny knew she'd take a curse for Lucy.

"I will, Professor. I promise."

-0-

For the umpteenth time, Polly scurried back into the Ravenclaw Second year girls' dormitory with something from the kitchens for Lucy. The injured girl was tucked up in bed, to her credit looking quite sickly, and was being particularly obnoxious. From milkshakes to crumpets, nothing seemed to satiate her recovery metabolism's demand for food.

The upside was of course that Lucy was not dead, nor was she under imminent threat of death any more. She'd been given the weekend off and homework she had due, and was very much enjoying it. The only tricky thing was getting to talk to her alone, because she was on bed rest in her room, and Conny shared that with three other girls, none of whom had the word 'privacy' in their vocabulary, so Lucy hadn't had any time to explain what she'd found when she'd gone to her house. Lucy hadn't actually been back to the house her parents had lived in for several years, but was never very clear about why… Conny assumed she had bad memories of living there, or the house reminded her of her dead parents. Lucy hobbled out to the Quidditch Pitch, but as soon as they were in sight of other students, she straightened her back and put a smile on her face, however much Conny knew she still hurt.

"Pride is the original sin, Luce." She mentioned as she covertly helped Lucy up the stairs to the Ravenclaw spectator tower where Jon was saving them seats.

"I'm not Christian."

"Most wizards aren't. My mum's a muggle, and she's a Christian… but I think sometimes the things that religion says make sense."

"Most of it's crap. Mildew and shellfish and shit like that."

"You're right. But… don't hurt yourself just to keep up appearances." Conny warned as they sat down. "It must be annoying to have to watch Des Greenbrook play again."

"Too right. Even with how inured I am, I could still play chaser better blindfolded."

"After Pride, Vainglory…"

"Shut up." Lucy glared at her, amused, her lips quirked.

"Are you sure? I mean, do you want to talk about it?"

"It?"

"Er, you know… um, your little excursion." Conny asked euphemistically.

"Oh! Well, it was a success, minus the beating and a half that Ali gave me." Pain flitted across Lucy's face. "Which, by the way, I knew I was getting, and took gladly for the cause."

"You knew?" Conny gasped, appalled. "You knew you'd get a walloping and you still got yourself suspended? Are you barmy?"

Lucy shifted uncomfortably and adjusted her t-shirt. Conny had lent her some tracksuit bottoms to cover her legs, as Lucy wasn't exactly feeling body-confident right now. Taken out of her usually expensive fashion-savvy outfits, Lucy could easily be any mixed-race London muggle. Then again, Lucy could probably pull off anything you dressed her in; she was like that. "Can we… leave it? Just for now?"

"Okay. Sure. No problem."

"Good. Now, I have whole notebook of crap I wrote down while I was there from some stuff in Ali's office, and from Alexi's filing cabinets. You're better at deciphering magical waffle than I am, so maybe you can take a look at it this afternoon? After the match?"

"There'll be a big party- maybe tonight isn't the time. Jon, how much do we need to win by to get the cup?"

"Three-hundred and twenty points." Jon said glumly. "Without Lucy playing, we've got no chance. The Gryffindor team ees on good form."

"Isn't Mark subbing for Riall?" Conny asked, squinting over to the Gryffindor takeoff tower. "He asked if he could play today, and the captain apparently agreed because even if he'd never played before, chanced are he'd better than Riall."

"I don't think Riall ever got over the whole snitch in the boxers incident, though." Lucy giggled. "But Bill was saying that his little brother Charlie is amazing. He's coming next year, though, so it'll be two years before he gets on the team."

"Great, so Gryffindor are going to trounce us for the next five years." Conny huffed, her eyes searching the crowd over in the Slytherin stands. Slytherin would today be supporting Ravenclaw. Then again, this didn't mean much, because Slytherin would support a long-tailed marmot if it was up against their nemesis, Gryffindor house.

David James loudly cleared his throat into the magical megaphone and quieted everyone down. He was today sporting a Hufflepuff cap and a rather tight-fitting white t-shirt, causing quite a few girls to swoon. For a commentator, he certainly worked out.

"WELCOME TO THE LAST QUIDDITCH MATCH OF THE '83-'84 SEASON!" He yelled, to tumultuous applause. The last match was always a good one, as afterwards you could calculate who'd won.

"With spectacular weather for our finale, this match is sure to be the clincher! Now, let's start with the lions- please salute the boys and girls of the GRYFFINDOR TEAM!"

The cadre in red burst out of their takeoff tower, proud and svelte in matching sunglass goggles due to the glaring sun. At the head of their arrowhead was Caspian Hungerton, waving and clapping to his house.

"And the eagles- yes, it's the bolt from the blue, the RAVENCLAW TEAM!"

Luke headed the blues, a smirk on his handsome face, clearly not phased by the huge point margin his team needed to win the cup. He hooted and hollered along with the crowd, slowing down from his lap to blow a kiss to Ally, his girlfriend. The whole stadium seemed to aww, save perhaps Professor Snape. The two teams settled down at the centre circle, Madam Hooch waiting with her hands on her hips for them to quieten down.

"The team captains shake hands- both looking cocky today, only Hungerton can really back that bluster up, Ravenclaw need to win by a spectacular three hundred and twenty points today to win the cup, else Gryffindor will win hands down." David observed as the snitch and bludgers were let go.

"On your marks- and that's the quaffle up! Through the melee, it's… Teressie for Gryffindor, zooming out of the fray, passes to Exmith, narrowly missing decapitating Ravenclaw beater Boris Malasten! It's Exmith positively shooting towards the scoring circle, Moss looking distinctly uncomfortable… but no!"

The crowd gasped as Luke dropped down from nowhere in a reckless dive to punch the quaffle out of Alfred Exmith's arms. He sped up, weaving between incoming players, swift as a lark, to surface as if from a swim in the Gryffindor circle. Hungerton was ready for him, aggressively coming out to confront him, but Luke chucked the quaffle up just as Hungerton left the goals unmanned, allowing Clara Fiago to chuck it home for ten points.

"Wow! What a play from Ravenclaw! Blink and you'd have missed it, that Luke Niall is a gift to the game. Ravenclaw seem to be on top form, will Greenbrook prove to be their weakness again, though?"

The Gryffindors, though valiant and noble, were not above using Greenbrook's ineptitude to their advantage. As though David mentioning it had jogged their memory, the Gryffindors fell into the same press that Slytherin had used effectively- force the quaffle to Greenbrook and then pluck it from his shivering hands. Aren Moss the keeper was doing his utmost best to save the barrage of goals that the trio of Teressie, Exmith and Boltzmann were trying to score, and he was doing well, too, but obviously getting tired. Half and hour in, Ravenclaw were leading 50-10, but Moss was puffing ad wheezing, his reactions getting slower. Luke and Clara had to do extra work to make up for Greenbrook, which was wearing them down. Kelley Wild was playing beater and although Boris was excellent at his job, she was only good, as she normally played chaser.

"I can't stand this." Lucy muttered, cringing as Boltzmann snatched the quaffle off Greenbrook for the umpteenth time.

"I know; it's depressing. Holloway can't catch the snitch until we're a hundred and seventy points above. Ridiculous." Conny was sipping butterbeer and feeling sorry for the team. They were working their arses off, but they just lacked the key chaser that would make them unstoppable.

Oh no.

"Lucy!" Conny whirled around, but Lucy had already disappeared. So much for the hobbling around with the mass of tender bruises. "Stupid git."

She stood and made chase down through the tower, seeing Lucy escaping through the wooden beams that kept the structure up.

"Don't be stupid! You'll hurt yourself!"

"I'm dying just watching this crap!" Lucy replied, thundering down the stairs. She grabbed a dusty old broom from the corner of the room at the bottom of the tower and jumped up onto it, zooming off. Conny scanned the room, seeing an ancient Shooting Star dying of termites poking out from under a musty drape.

"I'm mad." She sighed and hopped up, tailing Lucy, who was flying around the stadium to get to the takeoff tower, from which she was legally obliged to enter the game. Conny could see her wince and wobble occasionally from the pain of her mended ribs and the bruising. "LUCY!"

"NOT LISTENING!" Lucy trilled, almost laughing, slipping into the takeoff tower. Conny followed her, pushing past some gormless second-teamers holding towels and water bottles. Lucy grabbed a set of Ravenclaw quidditch robes and threw them on before, with a final one-fingered salute to Conny, disappeared out of the tower and onto the pitch.

"I don't believe it!" David James exclaimed. "Lucy Ra has just flown onto the pitch… that was a bit of a rude way to make it known, but it looks like she's subbing for Greenbrook mid-match! The look on captain Niall's face is priceless!"

Conny watched from the mouth of the takeoff tower, groaning. Neither she nor Lucy really managed the whole 'laying low' deal.

"So it's Gryffindor in possession, Exmith to Teressie… oh! Teressie takes a bludger to the arm and drops the quaffle… it was only a glancing blow, he's fine, but it's Niall with the quaffle! Niall to Fiago, Faust and Squares try to box Fiago in, but she punches it down to Ra! It's Lucy Ra, like a blur of blue, down that pitch in an instant… Hungerton lunges, but misses! Ravenclaw scores!"

Conny couldn't help doing a victory jig while Lucy, grimacing slightly, fist-pumped for the crowd.

After that, with the weakness of Greenbrook gone, the Ravenclaw chasers worked as one seamless unit, bypassing every defense, dodging every bludger, pulling off an impressive combination of a Hawkshead Attacking Formation and Woollongong Shimmy at one point. Kelley and Boris really rolled up their sleeves and started methodically taking out Gryffindors, forcing them to bring on their substitutes. Mark and Spencer were desperately looking for the quaffle as Ravenclaw's lead widened.

"Oh!" David exclaimed, along with an audible crunch and a groan from the crowd. "Faust's bludger hits Ravenclaw keeper Moss straight in the whatsits! He's out of the count, on the floor… someone get that man some ice!"

"Oh god." A terrified-looking third year boy beside her said. "That's me."

"You're the reserve keeper?" Conny asked.

"Y-yep. I'm only here because my Boris is my big brother… I can't really fly."

Conny suddenly realized what fate was trying to tell her. "Don't worry. I'll go on for you."

"On that?" He pointed to the Shooting Star. "No way, take this one."

He handed his slightly less ancient Cleansweep Three over, and his robes. "Thanks."

"No problem." He wished her good luck. Conny straddled the broom, promised herself that she'd take a risk management course, and flew out into the sun.

"Subbing for injured keeper Aren Moss is… hey, that's not Jimmy Malasten! Er… is that… it seems we have two second-year girls subbing today! Strange choice for the Ravenclaw team, but it's Conny DeH who takes up the role of keeper for the rest of the game!"

Luke shot her a weird look, but shrugged and nodded, mouthing 'as long as you play well'. She nodded, Madam Hooch blew the whistle, and play resumed.

Conny had not been prepared for the mess of the Quidditch pitch. She'd only practiced one-on-one with Az and Luke, and a couple of time messed around with Lucy and Mark in the evenings. So much was going on; her stomach was roiling and making her feel sick. She veered to avoid a bludger hit by a desperate-looking Dorcan Faust; Ravenclaw only needed thirty points to get their winning lead. Spencer was leading Mark on a tiring and prolonged goose chase around the pitch, trying to get him hit by a bludger, but he was too fast.

"Incoming!" Someone cried. Conny snapped her attention back to the game only to see a large, angry Alfred Exmith baring straight towards her with the quaffle.

Oh gods. Holy Merlin. Circe's lacy knickers. She tried to think of everything Az had taught her about quick reflexes and centres of balance, but it all flew out of her head. He was going for the far right hoop, but then something in his lean made her think he was feinting. She made the split-second decision to bear left.

It would have worked better if she'd uncurled her hand from the nervous fist it was fixed in and caught the ball, but because she was a little late on the save anyway she managed to punch the quaffle away to the left. Lucy zoomed in from nowhere and grabbed the falling ball, sparing a second for a wink before disappearing in the buzzing scrum at the centre of the pitch. If Lucy caught one bludger… she was in so much trouble.

"Ra to Niall, Niall feints a pass… back to Ra! Who knew she could fly so well? Maybe she's been practicing during her recent suspension? Eh… okay, I won't mention it again; I'm sorry professor… eesh. Anyway, Ra double-dips right and it's Niall who whooshes in to score the point! That's 30-180 to Ravenclaw! Somebody catch the bloody snitch soon or I'll go spare!"

As if on cue, Mark and Spencer dove towards the far corner of the pitch, the tiny golden ball glinting as it sped ahead of them. Crap. Ravenclaw had to score two goals before the snitch was caught!

"The time pressure is on! Arrit and Holloway neck and neck for the tricky snitch, while Ra and Niall practically pummel the quaffle out of Boltzmann's hands, not sure if that's legal, but Madam Hooch hasn't blown them up for it… Niall to Fiago, nice bludger coming in from Malasten to take out the approaching Teressie there… It's Niall going for the goal! He shoots… Hungerton saves! Unfortunate for Ravenclaw! Oh... but no! Hungerton passes to Exmith, but it's intercepted by a sneaky dive from Ra! Ra reverse passes to Niall; Hungerton is distracted leaving his left flank open… Niall scores! Ravenclaw need ten points!"

Unfortunately, Mark and Spencer were homing in on the snitch fast, their fingertips almost brushing its silvery wings. Lucy, seeing this, grabbed the quaffle off Serena Boltzmann by circling around her very fast to disorient her.

"It's… is it? Almighty close, they've almost got it, Ravenclaw need to scor-"

Lucy, abandoning tactics, drew in a huge breath and hopped up on the broom. "I'VE SEEN THIS DONE IN MUGGLE RUGBY!" She roared, holding the quaffle, then, with a great twist, kicked the quaffle towards the goal.

The whole stadium watched in horror as the quaffle approached the centre ring. Hungerton was ready, cocky; his hands outstretched to catch, when Boris gave a strangled cry and whacked a bludger at him. It slammed into his side, knocking him out of the way. The quaffle sailed through the hoop.

"I DON'T BELIEVE IT! WHAT A GOAL!" David yelled. "Lucy Ra scores from the centre line!"

The crowds were hoarse screaming with delight and suspense as the whole world, it seemed, turned to see Mark and Spencer go down in a heap on top of the snitch. The whistle was blown and the players dropped to the ground, Conny unsure if her legs would support her.

Mark and Spencer were helped up, the golden snitch on the ground beneath them. Madam Hooch picked it up and held it out. "It will respond to the seeker who touched it first."

She held the snitch in front of Mark. It remained sort of defeated and limp looking, its wings crumpled. So Hooch instead head it out for Spencer, for whom it went mental, its wings buzzing, trying to wriggle out of Hooch's hand.

"It's settled then. Spencer Holloway has caught the snitch. RAVENCLAW WIN!"

There was deathly silence as totals were calculated and the points margin derived. Then, someone very loudly squealed and Ravenclaw House dissolved in noise.

The screaming made Conny's skull vibrate and all the birds in the Forbidden Forest take flight, squawking indignantly.

Lucy launched herself into a hug.

"We won!" She yelled, but since it was so loud already, Conny had to read her lips. "We won, and you saved a goal!"

"But you scored like ten!" Conny shouted back, her voice hoarse. Jon, tears swimming in his eyes, ran onto the pitch and joined them in their victory hug.

"We'd never have won if subbing wasn't allowed." Conny realized. "Hey, you were amazing! Lucy! Luke! Clara! Boris!"

The whole team, including the rather weary-looking Des Greenbrook and the wincing form of Aren Moss, scrummed up together shouting and laughing, chanting 'We won the cup!' They took a minute to shake hands with the haggard Gryffindor team, but after those pleasantries were over, Lucy was carried on the shoulders of the mob in blue off the pitch to wild chanting and screaming. Conny was a bit big to carry, but Boris, who was built like a giant, scooped her up and deposited her on his shoulders, laughing all the while. The procession continued all the way to the Entrance Hall, whereupon the Ravenclaws burst into the Great Hall, wanting supper, in a huge tussle of goodhearted jostling. The house elves laid on a bit extra for the Ravenclaws, and had thoughtfully exchanged their normal goblets for one shaped like the quidditch cup. Conny drank pumpkin juice out of expensive silverware and joked and feasted along with her house, receiving her fair share of thumbs-up and pats on the back. It was Lucy, however, who was bathed in adulation, seeing as how she'd rescued the house and scored over a hundred points, winning them the cup. Even Luke, who was usually wary of Lucy and kept an eye on her behaviour was smiling wearily and patting her on the back.

The celebrations moved upwards to the Ravenclaw tower after a long lunch; so long, in fact, that it was past three when the last person filtered in through the door.

"Eh-hem!" Boris hopped up onto a table and quieted the bursting Common Room down. "Shut up! Hey, I said, shut up!"

The last of the jabbering Ravenclaws quieted down. "Right! Pru and Chloe are handing out drinks- well, mostly butterbeer, but drinks nonetheless. Has everybody got some? Hey, those third-years on the chairs are waving, go get them some… yep. Right, now… okay."

"Stop rambling, dork!" One of Boris's mates jeered, to which Boris replied with a hand gesture.

"As I was saying. We fought hard! We haven't won the Quidditch in bloody ages! After last year's totally boob, the future was bleak… but we came back from the grave to WIN!"

Cheers followed this exclamation, and several 'here, here!'s went around too.

"So, I'd like the whole house to raise a tankard to the following brave players… Our three chasers… The beautiful Miss Clara Fiago, the surprising Miss Lucy Ra, and our Captain and Head Boy, the gifted and sexy Mr. Luke Niall!"

"Here, here!"

"Special mention should go to the valiant but fruitless efforts of Mr. Des Greenbrook, of course."

"Here here!" Des blushed as people gave him pokes or commiserations.

"Then onto our delicious duo of beaters… my amazing self, of course, but also my compadre, the not-so-single any more Miss Kelley Wild!"

It was Kelley's turn to blush as Boris gave her a wink and blew a kiss. It was inevitable that they were going to get together.

"Now, toast for our hard-wearing keeper, Mr. Aren Moss, though he can't be with us right now as he's having his balls repaired in the infirmary." The room chuckled. "And also a cheer for his stand-in, Miss Conny DeH, who has proven that her abilities go beyond using reckless magic in public!"

"Here, here!" Everyone laughed.

"And lastly, to the boy with the snitch… you've still got it? There we go! For our seeker, Mr. Spencer Holloway! And for the whole Ravenclaw quidditch team, who kicked arse today!"

The acclaim was riotous as seventy Ravenclaws hurrahed and downed their butterbeer.

"I now officially declare the party begun! It doesn't end until every last girl and boy falls asleep or passes out! Go!"

With a flick of his wand, the record player started spinning and the Common Room filled up with music. Everyone was cheering and dancing and chatting, the mood exploding with merriness, jollity and many other synonyms for happiness. They had two tankards of butterbeer each and some suspicious-looking chocolate buttons, and were feeling warm and weary by six o'clock. Nobody else seemed to mind, though, as first to third years were shepherded up to their dorms by eight o'clock. Conny and Lucy were allowed to stay downstairs because they'd been part of the team, but they were pretty zonked out and probably a little drunk on a sofa mumbling things like 'the stars are falling!' and 'You know I love you right?' While the older students got into the proper partying, Pru and Chloe changed the record to something a bit sexier, as in shifting the music from the Black Eyed Puffskeins to the Horny Warlock Movement and We Blatch Your Mum. The beat rang heavy and thumping through Conny's feet and made her fillings tingle. Someone replaced the gas lamp lights with glowing multi-coloured balls of light.

"Lucy, this is getting trippy." Conny groaned, clawing her way out of the enveloping sofa cushions, feeling light-headed but strangely clumsy. "I wanna go to bed."

"But the lights are so pretty!"

"C'mon, Luce, I'm serious."

"Meanie."

"You need sleep. I bet you messed up your healing with that stunt." Conny tried to pull her off the sofa.

"I bet Az saw ya at the match." Lucy giggled, making a kissy face. "Bet he was cheering for ya. He really likes you, you know."

"We've talked about this before. No way." Conny hefted Lucy up and led her through the throng of older students by the wrist, Lucy stumbling. "You're never going to be able to hold your drink, are you?"

"Nope." She giggled again and stumbled on the stairs.

"I swear butterbeer is minimally alcoholic."

"It's 5.2%." Lucy said knowledgably. "Two tankards is like three pints. I need to pee."

"Well, get into your pjs, then we can pee and brush our teeth and go to bed."

"But it's only nine thirty!"

"It's late enough; come on!"

"I wanna go back downstairs!"

Conny sighed. "No, you're going to bed."

"You're not my mum, you can't tell me what to do!" Lucy indignantly tried to push her away. "I'm a quidditch champion! It's my party! Let me go!"

"Tch." Conny let go of her wrist. "Fine. I'm going to bed; don't embarrass yourself too much, we've got to start figuring about that spell tomorrow."

"Yesh!" Lucy cartwheeled merrily back through the dressing room to join the party. Conny, exhausted and exasperated, got into her pyjamas and got ready for bed. Polly and Anna were busy playing backgammon on Polly's bed; Rebecca was writing a letter home and looking angry. All very normal.

"Is Lucy not coming up to bed?" asked Anna, that plaintive, needy look on her face. God Conny hated those two sometimes; no personality but for the mindless supplication they lavished upon Lucy.

"No; she said she didn't want to have to put up with you two for as long as possible." Conny grumped, shoving her sweaty clothes in the laundry basket.

"You know, here I was hoping that a bit of alcohol would make you less of an abrasive tight-arse." Anna replied, equally snarkily. "You know, it's strange how you so deride us for being… what did you call us? Minions of Lucy? And then, the funny thing is, you're not much better. She's as in control of you as the rest of us."

"Not me." Rebecca pointed out, scratching a mistake out in her letter. "I couldn't care less."

"Bully for you, Becca."

"Well; anything to make life in this dorm easier." She replied cagily. "It's like living in a den of howler monkeys."

"Lots of poo and a Central American climate?"

"Exactly." Rebecca did chuckle a bit though.

Conny, too tired to take the confrontation any farther, slumped onto her bed and pulled a book off her pile. Dismayed, she saw that it was time to have another stab at _An introduction to Runes and their use in Modern Paperbinding _by Turgeous Floris, a book so thick that it needed its own postcode. Though in no mood to read it, any distraction from the pounding music was worth it. So, Conny turned to page 455, halfway through chapter seventeen '_On the practical application of sans-serif rune clauses_'. Soon, she'd fallen asleep of boredom.


	23. Chapter 22

Chapter Twenty-Two: The Preparations

Bach woke Conny up at around ten on Sunday, hopping up onto her bed and finding his favourite sleeping spot on top of her face.

"Urgh… gerroff, Bach, you smell." She extricated herself from his furry belly and propped herself up on her elbows, blinking and groaning. "Urgh. Again, urgh."

"Shh." Polly said from where she was sitting on her bed in her dressing gown, doing Charms homework with a cup of tea. "Lucy's asleep."

"Lucy? When did she come in?"

"About one. She's totally shattered."

"Told her so." Conny stretched and ruffled around for some clean clothes. The sun wasn't out today, so it wasn't as warm, but still quite muggy. If Lucy was going to wake up and take her through what she'd discovered at her brothers' house, she'd want to wear something practical, and not made of synthetic fibres. That was the funny thing about magic; it was very insular. Anything muggle weakened it. Conny could see why wizards eschewed modern conveniences like electricity and mechanical appliances; magic and muggle just didn't mesh. Eventually she grabbed some clothes from Void, which were 100% natural fibres just as wizards liked, and showered quickly, feeling refreshed. Lucy snored away, splayed out in bed like a starfish.

"How pissed off d'you think she'd be if I woke her up?" Conny asked Polly, who snorted.

"You seriously need to ask that?"

"No. Not really." Conny sighed and hunted out some homework she had to do. "If she does wake up, can you tell her I'm in the Commons?"

"Sure thing." Polly frowned and checked something in her copy of Magical Draughts and Potions. "Ah, before you go, you know the write-up for the Hair-Raising Potion?"

"Yes…"

"Um, I didn't chop my rat-tails right. How did you do it? Yours went down really well."

"Oh." Conny cast her mind back. "I think I slit them lengthways then diced finely for maximum surface area."

"Brilliant! Thanks."

"No prob." Conny replied, relieved that the hatred between her and Polly and Anna had returned to simmering from when it had overboiled last night. She left the dorm with her schoolbag and crossed the Common Room, which the House Elves had already tidied to sparkling clean. Professor Flitwick had evidently been around to check that they hadn't been too decadent, but Pru and Chloe were too clever to get caught, and had vanished anything illicit before he'd arrived. The evidence of it happening was there- a patch of carpet slightly cleaner than the rest, that sort of thing. She emerged into the commons, which was much larger and didn't smell as much of crudely distilled spirits.

"Bonjour." Jon greeted her by their favourite table, which was by the triptych of Harvey Ridgebit. He had been up for a while, judging by several completed homeworks and a pile of revision notes. "You're up early."

"Speak for yourself, swotzilla." She plonked her books down, displacing a couple of pages of notes on swelling solutions in Jon's curly, feminine handwriting. She got down to business; completing several assignments before a surprisingly refreshed-looking Lucy crashed their party.

"G'morning." She gave them a thumbs-up, sitting down with Jon, looking very summery in a beige minidress and a profusion of gold and silver bangles. "Wow, you guys actually get work done when I'm not around."

"Aye."

"Well, you're going to have to stop now, because we need to get down to business."

"Says the girl who slept off her hangover until midday today."

"I didn't have a hangover. I'm very responsible."

"As if." Conny decided not to argue. "Right, let's see what you got."

Lucy took out a red leather notebook that Conny recognized. "Hey! That's mine!"

"It is?" Lucy asked innocently. "I could have sworn… well, never mind. I used it."

Conny snatched it off her, reddening with embarrassment. A lot of private poems and thoughts were in that notebook. She opened it and flicked through until her scrawly handwriting turned into Lucy's clear, girly words.

She scanned her eyes over the first page; mostly an overview of stuff, some of her brothers' dealings and contacts that could have been involved, but it quickly led to the actual paperwork. Lucy had photocopied it and stuck it in.

"I went to a muggle newsagents to use the footocopter." She said proudly, pointing at the pages. Conny didn't even bother to correct her; Lucy and technology didn't mesh well.

"Lucy… you're sure this is the spell?"

"Yep."

Conny sighed. It was a three-phase organic gateway transfiguration, which she'd only encountered in theory before. That wouldn't have been a problem, but things got awfully fluffy and unscientific in the second phase, because you were trying to transfigure magic itself, something outside the parameters of any school-level skill. There was also a potion catalyst, which had three whole pages devoted to its brewing, and some tricky charms involved in the third step.

"Lucy… this is impossible."

"What? You never say that."

"That's because I'm very good at magic. But this… this is stuff that McGonagall would manage. Not me."

"No. Don't be like that; we can do it! We have to save Caradoc and Althea!"

"We can't."

Lucy scowled, obviously not liking what she was hearing. "But… if we don't, for the rest of our lives, we're going to look back and think that we didn't save them. And that's going to make us feel terrible."

"Lucy, even if we did manage to get there, what would we do?"

"I dunno! Warn him! Whatever. We have to." She shook her head vehemently. "Just tell us what you need. I know you can. Please."

Conny silently looked at the spell again. There was no way she could do it. Not for maybe a year or so, at the very least… and she definitely couldn't do the potion. "No."

"Any help you need. I will bully, steal or source anything." Lucy pleaded. "C'mon. Conny."

I am a weak, weak person, Conny thought, Lucy's large, watery brown eyes getting through to her. "Geez, all right."

"YES!" Lucy fist pumped inappropriately loudly, drawing stares. "I love you, Conny."

"Yes, yes. I can't promise anything. I'll try, but…"

"But what? Anything."

"I need you to persuade Rissa to help us with the potion." Lucy's face fell a bit, but she recovered well. Conny knew it was hard for Lucy to connect with Rissa, since the latter had changed her personality totally by using the draught of peace. Conny couldn't imagine what Rissa had been like when she and Lucy had been childhood friends; apparently, even wilder and more destructive than Lucy herself. There was strain between them, but if anyone could appeal to Rissa to undergo and dangerous and complicated potion, it was Lucy.

"Fine. I'll do that. I can get the ingredients, I had a look at them, they're… expensive and rare, a couple of them, but Alexi had some extra from the first time he had it, so I've got that. I can mail some people for the rest, and I'm know exactly where Snape keeps the rarest stuff."

"Okay. I don't want to start splitting this information up or make too many copies, so we'll try and share the book. The spell is strong, but being cast on the seventh painting, I reckon, would make the world inside the painting permanent. I think we can use the fourth painting to get in."

"Why the fourth?"

"It's about runic numbers… you won't like the reason."

"Tell us." Jon asked quietly.

Conny squirmed. "Well… seven is the most powerful magical number, but also the most mysterious. All other numbers have a symbol of a magical creature that represents them, but… these creatures and their natures are linked with the number."

"And four ees?"

"Four is represented by the fwooper." Conny said.

"And? What does that matter?" Lucy asked, "We had a fwooper when I was little, they're really pretty."

"Yes. But you use a silencing charm on a fwooper… why's that?"

"I dunno."

"I do." Jon said, now sharing Conny's look of discomfort. "Ze fwooper's song slowly drives you insane."

Lucy blinked. "Really? Ouch."

"Yes. And the fourth painting will be linked with the fwooper, if we use this spell." Conny explained. "I can't be sure, but I estimate that we'll have a limited time inside the painting before the world starts to dissolve into insanity."

"And us with eet."

Jon's chilling observation struck them silent.

"Will we mess up Caradoc's world?"

"No, just our version of it. We're tied to the phase from which we entered, he to his, they're separate interlocking versions of the same thing."

"…Right. We'll leave the complicated stuff to you."

"I'll need some things. For one, the fourth painting."

"On that." Lucy piped up. "I sort of brought them all with us, just in case."

Conny stared. "Where did you fit them all?"

"I have my ways. Anyway, don't worry about that, go on."

"Er… good. I'm going to need some Alchemist's chalk, four runed copper plates… erm, a switch of hornbeam… oh, and some Welsh holy water."

"Does it have to be specifically welsh?"

"It needs to have been consecrated by a welsh priest, yes."

"Those are mighty specific things." Lucy said, noting them down on the leftover parchment from Jon's charms essay. "But no problem. I can get those."

"Do I want to know how?"

"Nope." Lucy pinched her nose and grinned.

"Okay. Jon, I need you and Gil to team up. Maybe with Tilda."

"To do what?" Jon asked, looking relieved that he could be of use.

"I need you two to research where we're going. The kingdom of Gwent and all that. We'll stick out like a sore thumb in Arthurian England… maybe we'll need outfits. Pageboys and servant-girls would work best. You'll also need to come up with an arsenal. Spells, items, that sort."

"I'd be glad to. Consider eet done." Jon nodded, tidying his papers.

"Right. I'll start the spell prep, then. Good luck."

The three of them went their separate ways, each with different instructions, but a clear goal. They were going to save two lives.

-0-

As the summer days lengthened most of the school began to submerge into examinations. Even the younger students, whose exams weren't particularly important, were stressed out. More stressed even than these by half were a group of second-years who were, on top of trying desperately to pass their Defense Against the Dark Arts multi-exam, also secretly attempting a heinously complex spell.

Conny reverted into her bad habit of not sleeping to fit everything in. There was so much to do. Most people thought that magic was just about waving your wand and saying some latinish words, and admittedly so had Conny until she'd got to school. Of course, you could do it that way. If you were really good, you could get the feel for a spell, bypass the complicated stuff. Most wizards hardly used half the magic they were taught, so they got very good at the bits they did. If you honestly wanted to understand what magic empirically was though, there was a fair amount of study involved.

She was lucky that she was very smart and wouldn't have been troubled much by second-year exams to begin with, because she found herself with about two hours to revise before each paper. Lucy set off a dungbomb outside their history of magic classroom so everybody could rush to copy Gil Lockhart's paper while he was distracted, which saved them the trouble, but there were still many other subjects. In Herbology, they had to re-pot, feed and evaluate a mandrake in the sweltering greenhouses. At the end of the two hours, Conny's parchment was covered in smears of soil and blots of ink and blood where her mandrake had bitten her when she got distracted. Weighing a mandrake was a very messy, difficult job.

Potions was horrible. Snape whipped around in his billowing black robes sneering at everyone's cerebonum concoctions, muttering the wrong instructions as he passed to try and confuse them. Conny ground up fairy toenails with her teeth gritted, her mind a million miles away thinking about the circle she'd need to draw for the second part of the spell. She very nearly slipped up and added the fairy toenails straight away, forgetting that they had to be dissolved in ethanol first. It was only Jon's desperate hiss that saved her. Lucy was still trying to get Rissa to agree to make the potion to fruitless results.

They emerged from potions and were stuck immediately with sun-blindness. They had to go straight to another hour of DADA. Atremidus had the fan-heater on full, and Polly passed out somewhere during question seven of heatstroke, but unlucky for her Atremidus was a trained healer and fixed her up there and then, making her sit, delirious, through the rest of the paper. Next lesson was apparently magical diagnosis, which seemed as exciting as a poetry recital by Filch after all the papers.

Between exams, Conny, Lucy and Jon worked hard to bring their plan to fruition. Lucy sent out a small army of owls every evening and was inundated with packages the following morning, provoking stares at breakfast. She quickly sourced Conny's obscure demands. They'd chosen the seventh-floor hidden classroom as their staging ground, teaching Jon how to push in the right brick in the fake bricked-up doorway to pass through. Burn and scuff marks were the only evidence that Conny and Lucy had used the room was year to practice dueling. Now, the central floor was cleared and Conny was working on the circle for the opening of the portal using alchemist's chalk, the painting propped up within. A few of the decaying desks had been pushed together to one side and Lucy had set up a small potion-making station. It was still bereft of its potioneer.

It was sometimes like being in a strange, stilted play; right now they were rehearsing. Gil had given them all copies of pages from books to help them accustom themselves to the Kingdom of Gwent, and Tilda would occasionally pop in, take some measurements, then disappear for hours. At the moment she was fiddling with the correct livery for messenger boys of Caradoc's court.

"I still don't understand why we have to bother blending in." Lucy grumbled, grinding biting snagglefish scales with a pestle and mortar. "Surely we just burst in, and we're like 'Malfoy is after you, run away' and then we skedaddle?"

Conny smudged a rune and swore violently, distracted by Lucy's talking. "It's not as simple as that. How mental will everyone in that world think they've gone if we burst in? And besides, Luce, we don't know we can get to Caradoc anyway. I read the stuff, he's got a castle guard numbering over two hundred. I don't know about you, but I like my inner organs not stabby."

"Tch." Lucy glared at the fine dust she was producing, her eyes watering. "Ugh, this shit is horrid."

"Then get Rissa to do it; you're crap at potions." Conny carefully went over her lines.

"She won't." Lucy sighed, slumping into her creaking chair. "The reason Rissa was so good at potions wasn't that she was cold and followed the recipe to the word. She was… she was wild and mental, but she was… it's difficult to explain."

"Then write your thoughts down, order them and give me a clear, concise explanation."

"You're a prat. I mean that she's… she was a very instinctive, reckless child. But you put her in front of a cauldron and she just knew what to do, you know? She had a gift."

"And she doesn't any more." Conny assumed flatly, feeling a now familiar sense of encroaching helplessness. This was not going to work.

"No! No, she does. I know she does. She just has to stop the Draught of Peace and remember who she was. But Rissa's scared to do that. You would be too, if you had parents like hers."

"I met her dad." Conny remembered. "He took the cure bottle for the glass spider bite off me. Said it would make him rich."

"That's Atremidus's cure! He's a cheat!" Lucy said indignantly.

"I think we all are, Luce." Said Conny. "In our different ways."

She raised an eyebrow at Lucy, who looked away guiltily. It was funny, the pairing of Lucy with Conny, the first the best actress, the second who wore her heart always on her sleeve. Conny was terrible at lying and always acted on her moods and emotions. Lucy, however, was a whole other kettle of grindylows. You were never sure what Lucy was projecting and what she was really thinking. The disparity between her words and her meanings tricked even the most perceptive. Conny knew that Lucy was feverish and chaotic inside, conflicted. Her brothers had beat her senseless for a cause that she could see Conny hardly believed in. She was being pulled between the life she'd been raised to lead and any alternative. Perhaps that was why she was throwing herself so ardently into the rescue plan. It was an end that she felt morally justified its means.

Whatever. Runes didn't draw themselves.

"I am going to convince her." Lucy asserted quietly, pouring the ground scales into a small box for later use. "I know how. But I don't want to."

"Why?"

"Because it'll be a very bad thing to do, Conn." Lucy said, biting her lip. "And I don't know how Rissa will react. I don't know how she'll be… afterwards."

"Wait." Conny saw a look in Lucy's eyes. "You're not going to convince her at all, are you?"

"What makes you think that?"

"I know you too well, Luce. You can hide from others, but not me." Conny realized something. "Those scales aren't even used in the catalyst! They're for making potions impotent! You're going to taint her draught of peace!"

Lucy went pale. "What if I am? It's what we need, isn't it? One way or another?"

"Lucy, that's wrong!"

"It's necessary!"

They stared in hot silence at each other. Then Conny saw what it was Lucy wanted. "Fine. Okay. You do that, Lucy. You're more into this than me. You want this more. So it's your call. You're the leader."

Lucy blinked, taken aback. If there was any tension between them, it was because they were both leaders, and one deferring to the other way rare.

"No."

"No?" asked Conny, confused.

"No. You do yours, I'll do mine. I suppose… you're better than me at this stuff. The heroics."

"Heroics?" Conny said, despair in her voice. "It isn't heroics. Last year I was saving my own neck, nothing more."

"What about this year? You haven't anything to gain from saving Caradoc."

"It's still self interest. I wanted to solve the mystery, and I did; now I have to see it through. It isn't heroics. It's human nature."

"Whatever. You're the boss, though." Lucy pocketed the ground scales, showing Conny, perhaps unintentionally, who was really the boss. "I'm going to eat dinner with Rissa."

"Sure you are." Conny let her go, suddenly feeling a little less interested in drawing her rune circle. "No idea how to draw a thwei anyway."

Packing up the expensive sticks of alchemist's chalk into their felt-lined box, Conny wiped her sweaty, chalky hands on her skirt. She had a Charms exam tomorrow; she should revise after dinner. But June was already halfway done, and the school broke up early in July. There was no way Malfoy would take that long to do whatever he was going to. Things were still going too slow.

Changing her mind (Charms was no problem, after all), Conny grabbed a quick supper of a club sandwich in the dining hall and returned to poring over the rune circle. The runed copper plates required her to etch the symbols on (for north, south, east and west respectively), which tested her artistic skill to the maximum. Thank goodness she'd spent years at Brownie Guides making pasta collages. The years of primary education at muggle school can't of hurt either; the only thing you did in maths class was carving things into your desk, your book, or your friends.

"You've got mad skills, Conny." She told herself, grinning, finishing the last flourish of the syd rune. Nord, ost and vest were glimmering slightly on their copper plates. When she set the syd plate in its southernmost place of the circle, the chalk lines came ablaze with magic, joining the four plates together. Conny felt an immense sense of pride in her work. It was the biggest circle she'd ever done, and probably the biggest anyone at Hogwarts had ever had to do. There was a legend that Hogwarts's foundation stones formed a giant circle that kept the school's magic alive. She greedily imagined what sort of power you could tap from a circle like that. Enough to feed a hungry castle, certainly, with maybe enough left over for…

No way. Don't even think about it. You'll kill yourself.

Conny shook her head to ward off the odd numbness and stepped out of the circle. It would continue to charge until they gave it the activation energy and catalyst required to set the spell on the painting. They only thing that worried Conny was if a teacher caught a whiff of their super-strong circle. That would take some explaining, and she was a terrible liar.

It was past ten when Conny re-entered the Common Room. Most Ravenclaws were heading up to bed, their homework done. Though Lucy was nowhere to be seen, Jon was asleep and drooling over some Charms revision. Conny fondly poked him in the eye to wake him up. Jon jumped and swore, toppling off his chair.

"Time for bed, Jonny." She helped him up, dazed and confused as he was. "You've got an exam tomorrow."

"So 'ave you!" he said. "You didn't come to revise."

"I had other stuff to do. You know, of the life-saving sort."

"You can't save lives if you don't pass charms." Jon said sagely, tidying his books. "Well, you can't copy me tomorrow."

"If there's any copying to be done, it won't be between Ravenclaws." She chuckled, helping to stack errant papers strewn across the desk. "I love watching the Hufflepuffs get steadily more distressed as the paper goes on."

"Don't be mean. You were only a few genes away from being stupid."

"A narrow escape." She grinned, tired. "I need sleep if I'm ever going to manage it, though. Not that I'm going to be able to with that circle humming through my brain."

"Circle? You finished it?"

"Yep. It's crazy. Sets my teeth on edge."

"You should just submit eet for the exam, if eet's that good."

"Bah. If only I could. Sleep well, Jon."

"You too. Dream of failure."

"Love you too."

They went their separate ways at the top of the stairs, and Conny just caught the sight of what looked to be a changing room on the boys' side. That was interesting. The girls had a glamorous dressing room, full of mirrors and flattering lighting, while the boys had wooden benches and pungent towels on hooks. Well, she supposed that boys needed a testosterone-venting arena just as girls required a beauty reference room.

She then passed out on her bed, and the next morning, didn't even notice that Lucy wasn't in the dorm. Nor did Lucy spend any time that night in the Ravenclaw tower.


	24. Chapter 23

Chapter Twenty-Three: Slytherin Problem Resolution

The dungeons were always cold, regardless of the season. Winter, summer, spring or autumn, they always carried the dank smell of mildew and an unexplainable dampness. Lucy, who loved everything comfortable, was not at home underground. Still, she wasn't easily afraid like others in the dark. Her brothers had always taught her that she should think of herself as the scariest thing that could jump out at someone.

She'd been following Slytherins to get closer to their common room, to wait for Rissa. The Mothley twin had been avoiding her since she'd asked her to do the potion, so catching her was always going to be difficult.

Lucy could only hope that the ground biting snagglefish scales she'd managed to slip into Rissa's potion at dinner would help her out. As far as she knew, Rissa took a swig at all three meals. So hers for this evening wouldn't have its effect. She refilled the vial with the silver, snake-shaped stopper about once every three days, so Lucy didn't have long, but she hoped that Rissa had built up such a dependency on it that even a few days would turn her back. That was the theory. Rissa would have skipped her first dosage at dinner, so Lucy wanted to check if there was some visible difference.

Footsteps echoed around the corner and Lucy jumped into an alcove, pressing herself into the shadows. It was only a couple of fourth-years arguing. One of them was Az Spooks, Conny's not-actually-boyfriend.

"…Still, you're a pussy." His mate was saying with a snort. "To pass up a chance like that? Man, in a year she'll have great tits, too."

"Don't talk about her like that!" Az scolded him. "It's like I said. It's… it's creepy. She's way too young. Basically a child. Why would I want to go out with someone interested in all that kiddie stuff?"

Harsh words.

"You kidding? You saw her in the Blues-Reds game. She's good at quidditch, she's damn smart, and she's a fast developer. What else could you ask for, Spooks?"

"Shut up. You don't know anything."

"Tch. She reject you? Aw, your face! Az, you got dumped by a second-year! What a twat!"

"Piss off, Joe."

"She did, didn't she? Well, since we know she goes for Slytherins, mind if I have a go?"

"Hell you will!"

Joe smirked at Az as they passed the alcove Lucy was hiding in, not noticing her at all. "You're about as over her as Keiran Halwell managed to get himself over Chloe Kinsey at that party in the woods the other day."

"That wasn't his fault, everyone knows she puts out. Maybe she was on her period or something."

"I don't think Chloe Kinsey has had her period since she got it!" Joe guffawed. They turned a corner and their voices trailed off. Lucy slumped in the alcove, mulling over what she'd heard. That wasn't Az's true reason, was it? Because as she recalled, it was Conny who'd not-really-broken-up with him (as he was her not-really-boyfriend). Obviously he wasn't over it. Conny and Az fit together well, and there was no reason that they shouldn't have a go at dating. Perhaps… perhaps Conny felt young. Like there was no need to bother with love and boys and those sorts of things until she was older. But Conny hadn't been raised like Lucy; her parents had emphasized making wise choices. Not that Conny was famous for making good choices, but she'd never had to deal with expectations of the future. Lucy, conversely, had been introduced to matters of the heart early, though they had been closely tied with matters of the wallet. Before Khai had been taken to Azkaban, he'd laid out a business plan with her. If you fall in love, you can date him if he fits these criteria. You need to make business connections, and because you're a girl, you do that this way.

For Conny, dating was totally new territory. She knew nothing about it, just as any thirteen-year-old raised well should.

"If you were planning an ambush, I would suggest not zoning out as a good strategy." Lucy jumped a foot in the air and came back to earth to see an unimpressed Rissa Mothley standing in front of her.

"Rats. And I had thought what with me being dark I'd blend in." She stepped out of the alcove. "This is nice and clandestine, ey? Nobody will know if you say yes."

Rissa made her unamused face, which was the same of most of her faces. "You've taken tactical advice from Lord Cardigan, I see."

"Your jokes just get better and better." Lucy grinned, hoping that the presence of a joke meant that Rissa was slipping. "Anyway, I've been waiting in this cold, boring dungeon for a while."

"And I'm to assume that you have been waiting for a cold, boring someone in this cold, boring dungeon?" Rissa quipped with a half-smile. "My answer is still no. I cannot do it. You know this."

"You can! I bloody know you can! You just have to… let go."

Rissa sighed, something she wasn't wont to do often. "No. You have never been raised to accept that as an answer, have you? No. I cannot, I will not."

Lucy, however, had a plan. "You can. You've forgotten to do things, Rissa! You've forgotten not just how to make potions! I know! You can't paint any more! You can't write poems, or make sculptures! You couldn't write a novel or compose a symphony!"

Rissa stiffened, something that may have once been anger pinking her cheeks. "Why would I need to do any of those things?"

"Because without doing them, you're not living! You're seeing the world from behind double-glazed glass!"

"I would prefer distance over chaos."

"Is it not frustrating? Never quite feeling? You'll never feel the elation of a first kiss, or the sheer bliss of a summer sunset!"

"Nor will I have to struggle through the crush of heartbreak or the gloom of a winter storm."

"One doesn't exist without the other. Feeling the highs and lows is better than nothing." Lucy argued, stepping forwards, asserting the position she held. The argument that her life was better than Rissa's.

The little anger she'd managed to raise in Rissa dissipated, to Lucy's dismay, but it was replaced by something very different. Rissa's porcelain-smooth face slumped, and what must have been crippling sadness washed over her. Inadequacy. Frustration. Resignation. Words that Rissa's face never wrote.

"Lucy." She said plaintively, meeting eyes. Rissa's were shallow and grey, usually cold as chrome and unreadable. It was two complete opposites, with Lucy's wild, reddish-brown eyes beams of power and leaking emotion. "Lucy, I cannot."

So quiet, so shaky, so… scared. Lucy suddenly felt very responsible for what she'd done. Rissa was about to break a boundary that kept her sane. Lucy was goading her, showing on a silver platter all the things she'd denied herself for so long. What teenager could resist that? What human, even?

Lucy sucked in a deep breath and took Rissa's quivering hands. "You can. We're the same, Riss. Look what I'm like now. I'm not crazy, I'm not soulless. You don't have to worry."

"I am different, Luce. I remember. What it was like." Rissa shook, tears beading in the corner of her eyes. "You always told me to stop. You always held me back when I was going to do something dangerous."

"No. Riss, we're older now. And you know both extremes. You can find a happy place between them."

"What if-"

"You'll spend your life wondering, Riss. Just let go."

Rissa sucked in a breath and looked like she was going to collect herself, be sensible, recede back into her old self. Lucy wondered, just how potent was the potion? Just how wild was Rissa if missing just one dose brought her this close to the edge?

"It is too tempting, Luce. I know when I get back in there I have my draught to calm me down. I know that I can sleep easily. I know that I can… that I do not have to try."

"We all have to try." Lucy gripped Rissa's hands tighter. "Don't go to your dorm. We'll go out into the grounds. It's so warm, and sunset will last for ages. You can feel it all again, without the pane of glass."

"But-"

"No. I understand the word now. I have to say it to you, Riss, so you understand." Lucy tugged at her arms. "I won't take you against your will."

Rissa wavered.

"Riss." Lucy pressed her, seeing her chance slipping away. Then it wasn't just about the potion or the task at hand. Lucy fell away from even thinking about that, her heart screaming so loud in her body that her ears rang. How long had she wanted Rissa back? How long had Rissa been dying inside, always wondering what she could be? How long did Lucy have to convince her? "Riss, look at me."

Rissa obediently raised her eyes, once more finding them clashing. Lucy took a breath. She had to keep it simple. "Riss, you trust me, right?"

Rissa sniffed, smiling slightly. Lucy asking if she was a trustworthy person was like a Highwayman asking for feedback after a mugging. "Not with my best silverware, but yes, I trust you."

"Then come with me."

Rissa hesitated, Lucy having put the choice over to her. She flicked her eyes right, towards the Slytherin Common Room, and then left, towards the way to the entrance hall. To try or to exist. Fate or restraint.

Some tiny spark in Rissa finally caught aflame, and she moved to grasp Lucy's hands back. "Let's go."

Rissa followed Lucy uncertainly, clinging to her hand as they left the oppressive dungeons. Checking that no teachers or prefects were around, she pushed open the front doors and they slipped out. Atop the castle's main steps, they could see the grounds, the long summer sunsets falling pink and gold upon the forest and the surrounding grasslands.

The two girls ran out into the grounds, and Rissa Mothley smiled for the first time in years.

-0-

With a final flourish, Conny squeezed the last bit of knowledge her battered brain could hold out onto the exam paper in front of her. The heat was stifling, and even with all the windows open, the class still smudged their work with sweaty hands or became distracted by the floating motes of dust caught in sunbeams. This could easily steal time away from you, as Conny found out when she shook herself after a long session of staring, only for the clock to tell her that she had fifteen minutes left.

Professor Flitwick took their papers in with a flick of his wand and the class exploded out of the room, prying open top buttons and swinging jumpers over their shoulders. That was their last exam, thankfully, and the second-years ran free out onto the grounds at to their common rooms. They'd not get their results for another two weeks, just before the end of term, during which time they'd have to choose their new third-year subjects. They also had an introduction to third-year, 'intermediate' content in the lessons they already took, along with a whole lesson allocated for the setting of holiday work. What bliss.

Conny caught up with Lucy and Jon, probably the only three people who weren't going to take advantage of the rest of the afternoon off. They made the sweltering trek up to the seventh floor and entered their secret disused classroom.

"Ah, I love coming home to the soft thrum of a ridiculously powerful circle." Conny grinned, chucking her robes and her jumper onto an old desk and loosening her tie thankfully. "Would anyone begrudge me taking off my shoes and socks? It's too hot for grey cotton and patent leather."

"Sure, just don't waft your feet near my face." Lucy grumbled, yawning. Conny hadn't asked her what she'd been up to, but she'd been grinning and yawning all day and was oddly covered in dirt.

"Excellent." Conny pulled her shoes and socks off as Tilda appeared through the fake wall, carrying a brown paper bag full of clothing. "G'dafternoon."

"Hullo. I finished the tunics."

"You should've just raided Lucy's wardrobe, she's tunic-obsessed." Conny noted, scribbling down some charms she'd have to do on the clothes and those wearing them. Most protection charms were beyond her abilities, but a couple were viable options. "Though on second thought, charging into Wales in winter a thousand years ago in nothing but one of Lucy's minidresses would be entertaining."

"Especially if Jon has to wear one too." Giggled Lucy, the image obviously pleasing her. Conny was quiet while Tilda and Lucy shared a look. Sometimes she hated how Tilda always knew what everyone was up to, and the way she very subtly reminded everyone of that. Conny always felt as though, if she did something really bad, Tilda would know and take corrective action. Right now, Tilda looked disapproving, which, Conny decided, meant that Lucy had succeeded at her goal.

"When can we expect Clarissa to arrive?" Tilda asked, an undertone of spite in her dreamy voice.

"She's got to grab some ingredients, but she should be up soon." Lucy crossed her arms and gave a superior smile to Tilda. The two of them had probably never been destined to get on particularly well, now Conny thought about it.

"Okay. Well, we're done for costumes now."

"Excellent. Well, the circle's done, and I've put about half of the spells on the painting. Whoever's going needs to be inside the circle when I do the rest." Conny updated proudly. She should really submit some of those spells to Transfiguration Today. "Jon?"

"Well, I think we've read all we can. I 'ave some things… a couple of defenseeve spells. Ze demiguise bracelets, and your boots, and your thought-reading quill."

"That isn't much. I'd feel more comfortable with a sword."

"How many serving-girls and pageboys do you know who carry swords? We're servants, not guardsmen." Lucy snorted, taking a tunic out of the paper bag and shaking it out. "This one's too big."

"Of course it's too big, it's Gil's." Tilda took it off her and absentmindedly folded it.

Lucy pouted, waiting for hers. "I'm loving the colour scheme. Blue, black and some little gold thingymabobs."

"Per pale Azure and Sable three Fleurs-de-Lis Or." Tilda corrected. "But you can't be a servant."

"I can't? Why?"

"Because you're an Arab, Lucy. You didn't exist in Wales a thousand years ago. And this is very early Gwent, too. If the Arabs were there, they were slaves or travelling swindlers."

"But I'm not a slave or a travelling swindler." Lucy was now getting worried. "You mean I can't come?"

"Oh, you can come." Tilda revealed a carrier bag from somewhere. On the front of it was the emblem of Madam Meticulous, a popular wizard make-up branch.

"Shit, you're not going to cover me with paste, are you?"

"That was the idea." Tilda grinned. Lucy was trapped. Either she didn't go, or she subjected herself to a colour-change at the hands of Matilda Tirias.

"Won't they notice that I'm an Arab wearing a lot of foundation?"

"Let's hope not." Tilda said lightly. "Because I don't want you having to go near anybody who'd look at you twice, I made you a scullion."

"A what?"

"Kitchen-girl."

"Gad zooks, I've found my calling in life." Lucy said sarcastically, looking at the bundle of slightly shabby servants clothes that Tilda had for her.

"Good." Tilda looked at the fake wall just before Rissa and Gil arrived in that creepy way she could. "Afternoon."

Gil looked slightly shell-shocked and very excited in equal parts, and kept glancing towards Rissa. Conny hadn't seen her since yesterday, and the change was dramatic.

She had her cardigan slung over her shoulder, and her school shirt undone all the way down, showing a black camisole underneath. Her skirt was hiked up to normal (short) length, and her tie was swinging about. Rissa usually had her hair up in a ponytail or a bun, but today it cascaded over her shoulders and back in a mess of tangled ash-blond. Her thin face broadened with a nonchalant smile.

"Christ almighty." Tilda made the sign of the cross, perhaps out of instinct. Conny had the silliest urge to cry 'We've created a monster!' a la Dr. Frankenstein, but contained herself, so mesmerized was she with the new Rissa.

"Where is this potion?" Rissa asked. Her voice hadn't changed, and there were still no contractions, but she sounded… involved. Lucy showed her over to the cauldron. "Thank you. _Incendio_!" She lit the small oil-wick fire beneath it with a casual flick of her wand. Conny thought it might be hawthorn, judging by the large spurt of fire it produced from a fairly casual wave. Ollivander had offered her a hawthorn wand, explaining that the wood was full of paradoxes and conflicts, fitting well with a witch or wizard going through inner turmoil. That would certainly explain the disparity between what Rissa had wanted to happen and what had.

"So, you can brew the potion?" Conny asked. Rissa rolled up her sleeves and laughed- Rissa laughed!

"Of course I can. Give me a few hours."

"Hours? But, the recipe calls for fourteen days-"

"Only because the fool who wrote it wants to use knotgrass. Presumably Lucy's brothers grow a lot of knotgrass to condense into knox, so they have it readily available. However, ammonium chloride cuts the stew time."

"Ammo-whata?"

"Wizards call it Sal Ammoniac, but my father was always a purist when it comes to correct namings. Then, there is really no point in crocodile heartstrings, as they have the same potency route as the nettles." As Rissa said these things, she started wantonly adding ingredients from the small chest of potion ingredients Lucy had been compiling, and a small set of jars of her own. Conny watched her, completely forgetting to transcribe her charms. There was no… no precision, no thought, just a pinch of this, some juice of that, a short pause to puzzle at the order of ingredients. Rissa only referenced the full three-page recipe once or twice, preferring to feel the potion, to experiment. Conny, who was a bit of an artisan of Transfiguration, could appreciate just how good Rissa was. She could imagine the reams of equations and combinations swimming in Rissa's subconscious, being refined and simplified and turned into gut feelings of rightness and wrongness.

"Conny." Rissa said wryly, not looking up from the solution, which was steaming slightly. "Staring at me, while flattering, does not put protective charms on tabards."

"Oh- er, right." She quickly looked down, blushing slightly. "It's just, you know, I've never seen you like that before."

"Like what?" A slight edge had crept into Rissa's voice.

"All goddess-like and in your element."

Rissa laughed, a low, throaty chuckle that again surprised everyone in the room. "Goddess-like? I am flattered. I just feel… better."

"Better?"

"Like waking up from a long sleep." Rissa smiled shyly, grinding up something that once had belonged to an octopus. "I am still groggy, though."

"Groggy? Ha, ha." Lucy grinned, going through the outfits. "Hey, how come Conny's is so nice?"

"Well, I figure this is Conny's expedition, so I set her up with the best job." Tilda explained. "She's an ewerer."

"A whosit?"

"She brings and heats water for the nobles, hence the thick gloves so she doesn't burn herself. Jon and Gil, being our only boys, are both pages. Gil is a footman's page; Jon is a page scion of the castle. Gil has more problems, because he's more likely to be caught out. Jon has it easier as there's a big event on at the castle, many page scions will have been hired on for the extra work."

"You really put a lot of thought into this." Conny noted, taking her thread and needle out. "Will they notice if I stitch protective runes into these?"

"Not if they're subtle. Magic, remember, is widespread and openly admitted in this era."

"But some wizard is bound to notice if you've got a massive rune for 'stop Malfoy killing me' across your chest." Lucy said unhelpfully. "Out of interest, is there a rune for 'stop Malfoy killing me'?"

"Of course, it's shaped like this." Conny drew a massive penis on the desk next to Lucy. "Very powerful. Would you like me to sew it onto the front of your dress?"

"Har har." Lucy gave her the two-fingered salute. "Is there anything I can do? Now the Risster is getting her Snape-powers on, I haven't much left to occupy myself."

"Can you embroider?"

"I was taught to suture minor wounds, does that count?"

"Should be fine. Here, sew these ones on this page near the lining."

Everyone in the room then had something to do; Rissa was busy with the potion, Conny and Lucy with the defensive runes, Jon copying out the small arsenal of spells that he thought would help. Tilda was altering their clothing, cringing at her reasonably poor seamstressing skills. Gil kept nervously reminding them what titles to use and who they reported to.

"Urgh, there's so much to think about." Conny massaged her temples as she pricked her finger for the umpteenth time. "I feel like when this is all done I have to hand it in as coursework."

"If you get an Outstanding, we save two lives." Lucy said lightly, though it made everyone feel a little weird. "Tough crowd. But guys, since we're all here, we should probably… talk about this."

"Talk?" Everyone put their things down and stopped what they were doing to look at Lucy.

"Er… don't look at me. Conny's the boss."

"Don't put me on the spot!"

"You need to get used to it. Go on." Lucy pushed her out of her seat. Conny cleared her throat at looked at the expectant faces.

"Er… well, we're all here. Thanks everyone for sticking with this, I know it's a little out of the ordinary, but…"

"Urgh." Lucy caught her trailing sentence and decided against the whole 'Conny's the boss' thing, at least when it came to speech-making. "Right, hi all. We're very soon going to go into the painting, as you know, to rescue Caradoc from Lucius Malfoy. Now, Caradoc has with him Althea, who is Lucius Malfoy's sister. Bad Malfoy is a dark wizard, and he wants to either get rid of, or take back into the real world, his sister and or Caradoc."

"Why's that?"

"Well, Bad Malfoy has a squib brother, Good Malfoy. Good Malfoy and Caradoc sided against the death eaters in the war, and we think that Bad Malfoy didn't really care. But, then his pureblooded witch sister totally disgraced the Most Evil Malfoy Clan and sides against You-Know-Who. To add insult to injury, Althea starts dating Caradoc."

"Then what?"

"Well, obviously the Most Evil Malfoy Clan can't have people know that one of their members isn't Most Evil. So, hypothetically, Bad Malfoy goes after his sister and says 'Come over to the dark side'. She doesn't really buy this, but the Most Evil Malfoy Clan won't take no for an answer. So, she and Caradoc elope. Not to, like, Canada, like normal people, or even Cyprus. They elope into a painting."

Gil, who was following closely, nodded. "Caradoc thought he had a foolproof escape, but Malfoy found him, somehow. So we have to go in and tell Caradoc he's being hunted, and to watch out for Bad Malfoy."

"In theory. But it may come to… well, I say getting Caradoc out of the painting, but in actuality we have to be prepared for a little Malfoy-battling too." Lucy admitted. "But don't worry! We're well prepared. It won't come to that."

"You say zat…" Jon rolled his eyes. "Your plans are famous for going right, are zey not?"

"Don't be pessimistic, Jon. Think of how beneficial this whole thing will be."

"Sudden and violent death ees not traditionally considered beneficial." Jon quipped back. "But I suppose we must, hm?"

"Well, none of you have to come if you don't want to." Conny put in quickly. "If death doesn't appeal."

"Well, I'm not passing up this chance. How often do you get to travel to Arthurian Wales?" Gil said. "I'm in."

"I have to go." Tilda said simply. "So I'm in."

"Of course, me and Conny are in." Lucy said. "Riss?"

"I will join you, if you do not mind." She hummed, calming the spitting cauldron. "It will be… fun. I am in."

They all looked at Jon, who was wriggling uncomfortably in his seat. "I can 'ardly say no now. I'm een."

Lucy clapped her hands together with an air of finality. "Okay. So, we have our team. Now, we have to think of when to do this. Conny?"

"Time moves slightly differently in our reality. Since we're not using the seventh painting, we won't have much time before the world in ours falls apart anyway. The best window of opportunity… probably this weekend."

"Makes sense. People might miss us, though."

"Don't lie. We're second-years, we blend into the tapestries if we stand still too long."

"Non." Jon shook his head. "Conny, Lucy, you two are well-known. People recognize you… eef you disappear, eet may be a problem."

"Don't be silly. We'll manage. We're second-years who've just finished our exams and the weather is crazy good. They'll just think we've gone feral and are camping by the lake or something." Lucy disagreed. "This weekend. Conny, can we be ready for then?"

"We're ready when the potion's done." She nodded her head to Rissa, who was in the process of smelling the now shimmering deep green solution.

"It will be ready by tomorrow, which, as I recall, is a Saturday."

"Brilliant." Lucy said. "So, tomorrow morning straight after breakfast, we meet here, ready to go."

Everyone nodded and breathed in silence for a bit, wondering what they'd just gotten themselves into. Gil excused himself first, clutching his book of legends to his chest. Tilda left soon after, with a final icy look at Lucy.

It was then just Conny, Lucy, Jon and Rissa who was preoccupied with the potion. They all let out the lungful of air they'd for some reason been holding and sagged into their chairs. Conny told Jon and Lucy to help her finish stitching the defensive runes on and they chatted about nothing for a couple of minutes before Jon, it the middle of a tricky curl of the cwenfr rune, seemed to suddenly remember something.

"Conny." He broached, looking mischievous. "You 'aven't done as I asked."

"Hmm?" She accepted a thimble from Lucy after pricking herself again. "What was that?"

"You 'aven't kissed Az Spooks yet."

"Not this again! It didn't work out, okay? And we have a lot more important things to worry about." She grumbled. "Pass the blue thread, please."

"'Ere you go. But you promised. And if we die this weekend, you'll 'ave broken eet."

"All the talk of dying is making me feel _so_ much better."

"But more likely to take zis last chance to find love?" He asked, doing his puppy eyes.

"Why are you so set on me and Az getting together?" Conny asked, suddenly suspicious. "There isn't… there isn't money bet on it, is there?"

Jon looked away guiltily while Lucy smiled widely, looking smug. "You as well, Lucy?"

"Um… most of the second year, actually. And Luke and Ally, and Boris and his mates… many people stand to lose a lot of money if you two finally get together."

"You're betting on my love life! I can't believe you!" She said incredulously. Rissa snorted in the corner. Just because she suddenly had emotions back didn't mean she was off the hook, so Conny glared at her. Then something occurred to her. "I won't be mad at you… if you tell me which way everyone bet."

"Well, Jon bet you two would kiss by the end of term at 11/3. Boris and his mates had 4/1 you two would get together then break up… Ally and Luke bet at two to one you'd stay together."

"We should call you Lucy Ladbrokes, the way you're going." Conny said sourly. "Wait, the odds on us kissing are 11 to 3?"

"They used to be a lot less, then they went up after the party scene."

"Who stands to lose if I kiss him?" Conny asked.

"Polly, Anna, Gil, Rebecca, Ralphie, Lawrence, Rosie, Mark…"

Conny despaired. "So many people bet that my relationship wouldn't work out? Do people not believe in love any more?"

"They do, but they know you. They knew from the start that you weren't mature enough to enter into a serious relationship." Lucy said scientifically, much to Conny's chagrin. "But it's probably just jealousy. Az is older, hot and talented."

"Hrm. Well, I'm going to prove them wrong." Conny stood up, a renewed sense of purpose in her chest. "Well, Jon, you'll get your way and win money. But I'm just looking forward to the overwhelming anger and jealousy of all of the people I live with stagnating and growing over summer until they hate me."

She set the tunic she was embroidering down and was about to storm out purposefully when Rissa stopped her. "You would like to know where Azinnus is, perhaps?"

"Oh, er, that would be nice."

"He and his friends were planning a barbeque by the lake tonight. You would probably find him there later on."

Conny considered this and decided that she'd best finish what she was doing, and then wait until she knew where Az would be so she didn't wander about looking for him like a dunderhead for half the evening. So, forgoing her dramatic exit, she sat back down to finish the rest of the embroidery. It was time for supper by the time she'd finished and her fingers were aching. She did decide, however, that these were the best-protected tunics and breeches money could buy. It was a shame that no money could be made out of this. Conny had taken the idea for stitching runes into clothes from her books, and suddenly realized that this could be very lucrative. However, she'd had a look at her school robes and found tiny, hidden runes in black thread decorating the inside and the middle layer of cloth. They were to ward off wear and tear, potion damage and moths. Similar ones were hidden on her clothes from Void. Ingenious.

Once she'd finished, she excused herself from the room, thinking it should be easy. Just find him, kiss him, no problem. But how did you kiss a boy? How do you kiss, period? She got steadily more worried and nervous as she got closer to the ground floor, and kept checking her appearance in reflective surfaces. She looked childish in her school uniform. Should she change into something more flattering? Her hair was frizzing after the hot day. That was the problem with curls… did Az prefer it up?

"You'll go mad thinking so hard about it." The Grey Lady said as she drifted past, a small smile on her lips.

"How do you know…?"

"You are by no means the first lovelorn young woman in my house, Miss DeHayersae." The Grey Lady reminded her sagely. "I would give you advice, but my romantic history is not a good exemplar."

"I'd love to know, but maybe not now." Conny pulled her fingers through her hair again in a vain attempt to detangle it.

The Grey Lady sighed. "I suppose I have all eternity to recount it…"

She floated off, leaving Conny no happier about facing Az. In the entrance hall, the House Point hourglasses gleaming in the yellow evening light that was spilling through the high windows. There was an impressive pile of Ravenclaw's sapphires in the bottom glass, probably the most that were there. Slytherin were only a few points behind, but what with the term drawing to a close and Ravenclaw winning the Quidditch Cup, it was almost a cert.

She pushed through the main doors and observed the grounds, bathed in the light, beautiful and magical. A sigh escaped her lips unheeded. Conny loved her family and her home, but Hogwarts was just… it was as though everyone had taken the dreams of every child and made them into a school. A sanctuary away from the trials and tribulations of the real world, with its Statute of Secrecy and the lingering fear left after the war. She realized that she never wanted to leave.

She shouldn't really be out too late, because younger students had earlier curfew times and Filch was notorious for sweeping the castle for stragglers. Conny kept to the long summer shadows of the castle, stopping briefly to a strange patch of disturbed earth. She looked up and realized that this was where she'd fallen from the tower earlier in the year. What a weird thing it had been, the linking of the wands. Thinking about Rissa's wand… what did it mean, that Lucy and Conny's wands linked to save her life, but then repelled each other? Did it reflect the future of their relationship? She hoped not.

Once she'd gone through a small copse of trees, she was on the stony, shale bank of the Black Lake. It wasn't very sandy at the best of times, but it sufficed. Surely enough, a large gathering of fourth-years were visible on the opposite bank, lit by a large red and purple bonfire. She edged closer, not wanting to disturb them. The group was mostly Slytherins, with quite a few Ravenclaws and a couple of cooler Hufflepuffs. Two portable barbeques were set up and the smell of sizzling grilled burgers and sausages was drifting about, making her mouth water. Conny hadn't eaten yet.

Her eyes finally found Az, who was chilling out by the waterside with a beer and a hot dog, a couple of his mates splashing about in the shallows or lounging around. She wished there was a way you could privately get communicate with someone quickly- like a miniature portable owl or something. If only wizards used the phone system. Conny knew from her mum that nowadays, you could buy this phone that you could carry around with you anywhere- a mobile phone, they called it. She'd seen businessmen on the tube with them, big, brick-sized black boxed with extendable antennae. Maybe in the future they'd get more discreet.

She wavered on the corner of the circle of light created by the bonfire, oscillating between getting his attention or just leaving quietly and pretending she'd kissed him. It was dishonest, but so was betting on her romantic problems!

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you looked at it), Az stood up to shake shale and sand out of his shorts and get another beer. He was walking towards a coolbox when he spotted her. Surprised, he diverted his course around the group towards her.

"Conny? What're you doing here?" He asked, checking over his shoulder. His uncomfortable mien did prove that he hadn't quite gotten over her very public denouncement of him as her boyfriend.

"Um." She said helpfully, standing like a fool in front of him. "I, er, I wanted to… apologise?"

"That sentence probably shouldn't have been a question." He chuckled, his shoulders dropping, more relaxed. "But it's okay. I understand."

"You do? Because I don't."

"Well, I get it. You're only a second year, it must be weird to even think about dating or boys or anything… I'm sorry if I thought we were something we weren't."

He was being reasonable! This wasn't meant to happen at all!

"Um… well, I thought about it a bit. I have some caveats."

"I love that you can use the word caveat in a sentence." He grinned.

"Er… thanks." She looked down at her feet, blushing. Why was it so easy to do complex magic, but so hard to talk to a boy?

"So, your caveats." He prompted.

"Oh! Um, yes. Well, I don't mind… being your girlfriend." She said quietly, like it was a dirty word. "But… I don't know much about… these sorts of things. And I don't want to be a soppy couple like Ally and Luke. Like, I don't want a week's anniversary gift. Please."

"You think I'm that sort of person?" Az laughed, the question slightly incredulous. "Okay. I understand. But Conny… admittedly…"

He lowered his voice with another check over his shoulder, a slight blush of embarrassment creeping over his cheeks, "Admittedly, I'm as new to this as you are."

"What?" She gasped. "But… you're fifteen! You're on the quidditch team! You're really handsome!"

"That doesn't mean I've had a girlfriend before." Az said like it was very obvious. "You forget, Slytherin has a very… tight policy on dating. I'd get ribbed so bad if I dated most girls who'd asked me."

"You get asked?" Conny asked, crestfallen. Of course. How silly it would be for her to think Az was just waiting around. She'd clearly said no, why shouldn't he have moved on and found a different girl?

"Yes. But I didn't say yes, if that's what you think."

"So… so, um…" She stammered as Az hovered expectantly on the edge of the firelight.

"Will I be your boyfriend?" He said helpfully.

"Yes, that."

"Of course I will." Az held out his hand. Conny looked up at him. In the dark, his deep green-grey eyes were almost black and glinted, reflecting the background firelight. Something felt like it dropped in her stomach, sending a numb zing of adrenaline around her body. She took his hand tentatively, and his fingers curled over hers. A strange hush had fallen.

They stared at each other for a few awkward seconds, the tension mounting, the heat from the bonfire snaking around the ground. Az was waiting, unsure. Conny, realizing that he was too much of a gentleman to make the first move, sighed. She leaned closer, closed her eyes, and kissed him.

People say that you feel fireworks when you kiss someone. Conny, however, was alarmed when several Filibuster fireworks exploded violently right next to them and tripped over her own feet, clinging to Az for support, though he too had jumped up in the air. They fell down together onto the shingle, an immensely painful experience.

"Ow, ow, ack!" Az groaned, rolling off his back and turning around. "I forgot they were going to do the fireworks."

"I think I have a scallop shell stuck in my bum." Conny winced as Az helped her up. "Merlin!"

"Hang on, you've got some flint-"

"Don't touch there!" She slapped his hand away, but Az just laughed and produced the irritating piece of shingle that she'd fallen on. "That wasn't how I planned it to go."

"You've been planning this?" He chuckled, throwing the shingle into the lake with venom. "I thought it was all meant to be spontaneous and candlelit."

"You watch too many girly movies."

He frowned. "What's a moovee?"

"Wizards…" Conny shook her head. "Never mind. I mean that you're sappy."

"I am not!"

"You're a secret poet." She put her hands on her hips, making a point. "You took me on skytop picnics."

"Shh, you'll blow my cover."

"Make me shut up."

He took the invitation, and this time, kissed her without being startled by fireworks. His lips were slightly chapped but warm and soft. What did you do now? Just stay there?

Az left the kiss and stood back. Behind him, a group of fourth-years wolf-whistled and cheered. They whipped around, mortified. Az took her hand tighter and pulled her into the woods with a last rude hand gesture to his mates until they were out of sight of the party.

"Sorry about them." He apologized. "They're just being idiots."

"They're just jealous." Conny grinned, wondering how many times you were allowed to kiss someone.

"Of course they are." Az returned her smile, squeezing her hand. "You want to walk?"

"I probably have to get to bed soon." Conny remembered. "I have a lot to do this weekend."

"Too much for us to hang out?" He pouted, "Since the season's over, the Quidditch pitch is hardly booked. We could have a fly around in the good weather."

"I'd love to, Az, but… I've got a really big project to finish for McGonagall by the end of term, and I've been putting it off so much… I'm sorry."

"Academics is stealing my girlfriend." He pulled a face. "So you came to apologise and for us to get together, then you have no time for me?"

"No! That's not what it is at all, Az. I really wish we could go flying. Really, truly, I do. Cross my heart and hope to die. But I just have something annoying to do this weekend." She half-lied, guilt reddening her face. "Please, don't be angry."

"I'm not angry." He said, angrily. "I just… you sure know how to fuss a guy around, you know? I really like you, Conny."

"I really like you too." She pleaded. "Please, Az, it's not your fault at all. I'd love to spend the weekend with you. But… but I can't. Please trust me?"

"I do. It's just hard, you know?" He fumbled for words. "Okay. This weekend, you finish your project. But that's the last weekend of term… maybe we could make a date in the holidays? If your parents are okay?"

Conny groaned, the thought never having occurred to her. What would her parents say if she told them she had a boyfriend? Who was a fourth-year Slytherin, for that matter? "O… okay. Sure. Holidays it is."

"The Lakes are lovely in August. We can go rambling." He smiled. "Okay. We'll go back to the barbeque and get you something to eat?"

"I don't know if I'll be welcome with all the fourth-years…"

"Nonsense." He took her hand. "If they don't welcome you, I'll beat them up."

She giggled at the absurdity of Az beating a load of burly Slytherins up, but then realized that he probably could, what with his lithe and muscled seeker's physique. "Try not to."

"No promises." They strolled back through the copse to the barbeque scene, where a large group of fourth-years were now playing volleyball with a tattered quaffle. Nervousness squirmed in Conny's stomach; she knew she was safe with Az, but still, they were all older and taller and meaner-looking than her, and she doubted that Az could beat everyone up if they all jumped in at once.

Her brain reminded her that she was being stupid. Slytherins were not the jumping-in type. She's wake up with a feral badger in her dorm or something if a Slytherin girl got jealous. Or something like a Spontaneous Farting Potion in her morning pumpkin juice. They were sneaky, not the sort to attack.

Still, she clutched at Az's hand a little too hard as they broached the circle of bonfire-light. Az's arrival didn't turn many heads from their entertainment of choice, but a few did take notice. One of his friends gave him a thumbs-up, another a low whistle. A few girls who weren't as well acquainted with Az's private life raised an eyebrow, but Conny tried hard to ignore them.

"What d'you want?" He asked as they reached the barbecue, which was manned by a boy Conny vaguely recognized as a Ravenclaw fourth-year called Liam.

"Um, what is there?"

"It's a barbecue, Conny. Hot dogs or beefburgers, duh."

"It isn't that obvious. When my dad tries to barbecue, it could be anything." She fondly remembered David's useless culinary skills at the BWLiF last year, when the fish he'd grilled had crumbled to ash before he'd served it. "But I'll have a hot dog, please."

"Here." Liam carefully placed a slightly charred sausage in a bun and gave it to her on a napkin. "You're Conny DeH."

"I am." She replied, helping herself to mustard.

"So, you two are going out?" Liam asked, flipping some pinkish patties over.

Conny and Az looked at each other. They were, Conny reminded herself. You could go out without being chained to the person. It was all okay.

"Yes." She said with confidence, feeling Az relax next to her.

"Cool." Was all he said, smiling lopsidedly. "Lucy Ra owes me money, then."

"You too!" She couldn't help cry, incensed. "Just how many bets were made? Is there anyone in this school who doesn't stand to win or lose a few sickles at my expense?"

Liam thought about it for a second, and then shook his head. "It was pretty much the talk of the common room since Easter."

"Well, they don't matter." Az said protectively. "As long as you make Lucy give you a cut. No doubt she's making a pretty sickle out of this."

"True. Good idea." They left the bonfire, Conny tucking appreciatively into her hot dog, not having realized just how hungry she was. She tried her best to eat nicely as her mum had told her to in front of boys, but in the end the sausage was just too hot and she was too hungry, and ended up wolfing it down. They walked back through the grounds to the castle, as Conny wasn't dressed for the evening, even if it was a warmish one.

"Do you want me to walk you up to Ravenclaw?" Az asked gallantly as they paused in the Entrance Hall; his common room was down in the dungeons. Conny was about to say no, but then had an idea.

"Yes."

Not expecting that, Az nevertheless complied, and they traversed the school, right up to the seventh floor. Despite being very fit, he was puffing a bit by the time they climbed the final staircase. "Forgot how far up the seventh floor is. You lot have to come up here, like, three or four times a day?"

"Yep. Does wonders for the thigh muscles." Conny replied. "Though admittedly there are a few secret passages that make the journey easier."

"Why didn't we use them?"

"They're called secret passages for a reason, Azinnus." She grinned, using his full name. You'd have to be pureblooded fools to call your son Azinnus, but Conny liked the nickname Az. It was sort of cool. "Now, if I'm right, they should all be in the Commons because someone told me Boris accidentally dropped a dungbomb down the back of an armchair last Tuesday, and it went off when Polly sat on it earlier."

"Boris Malasten…" Az mused thoughtfully, "Is he still selling that powdered dragon claw?"

"Erm, I think Lucy does that now." Conny replied uncomfortably. "But you should never cheat by taking it before exams."

"I know, I know." Az held up his hands in surrender. "It's just that you've got this project to finish… and I happen to know a bit of powdered dragon claw speeds up that process. So we can spend some of the weekend together, is all."

"Sweet of you, but I won't touch the stuff. Lucy fed some to Gil Lockhart's owl and it died."

"Serves it right, it was a right haughty pecker. My poor little Plumpton regularly got knocked off a good post in the Owlery by that puffy-feathered beast."

"You called your owl Plumpton?"

"Famous seeker." He explained. They rounded a corner and emerged into the airy Ravenclaw Commons, where surely enough most of the house was camped out. From down the staircase nearby that led up to the Ravenclaw dormitories, a slow stream of billowing sickly green gas was flowing, accompanied by a foul stench. "Urgh, you weren't wrong about the dungbomb." Az coughed into the neck of his jersey. "Let's move out of the way."

"Hang on a second." Conny pulled him right into the middle of the commons. She spotted Lucy and Jon playing chess in a corner, along with most of her friends. As if sensing the commotion in their midst, the collective head of Ravenclaw raised to regard Conny and Az. She briefly whispered, "Sorry," to him before, in front of the whole house, initiating their third kiss.

The room seemed to all suck a breath in together as Conny's lips met Az's. Just for a brief few seconds, nothing more than a kiss and nothing less, but a kiss nevertheless. She parted from him slowly, feeling dizzy.

"You like drawing attention, hm?" He smiled, hunching instinctively away from the looks they were getting. "You could have warned me."

"That wouldn't have been as fun. They wouldn't have seen the look on your face."

"Finished now?"

"For the time being."

"I'll see you later, then." He said, slipping his hand out of hers. "After you've gotten your project out of the way."

"I can't wait."

"Me either." He brushed his lips against her forehead, his flyaway flaxy hair tickling her eyebrows. "Bye."

"Bye." With a final smile, Az made his escape and slipped with amazing alacrity around the corner and out of sight. Conny was left with her heart stammering in her chest.

Lucy, of course, wasting no time, stepped up on a table. "Ladies and gents, collect your winnings or mourn your losses now."

The small portion of the house that had bet on Conny and Az staying together and/or kissing high-fived their mates and collected a fistful of sickles apiece from Lucy, while the others grumbled in their seats. Conny felt thankful that this was all over. If Lucy was going to interfere with her romantic privacy behind her back, she was sure going to try and get even. Still, the public kiss was too embarrassing for her to repeat, and she retreated to the corner with Lucy and Jon. Once the money was all doled out (with, Conny noted, a sizeable amount clinking in both of her best friends' pockets), everyone went back to their work. The fifth- and seventh-years had a couple of exams left to do, but the rest of the house was relatively chilled out. Most were reading books, playing chess or gobstones, trading chocolate frog cards or chatting about nothing.

"When you said you were going to sort everything out," Jon began, taking one of Lucy's bishops, "I didn't think eet was going to be so… public."

"Well, I won't have anyone doubt me this way."

"True."

She cocked an eyebrow at both of the guilty bookies. "I want fifty percent."

"Fifty!"

"Yes, fifty. Fifty and I won't let you both be murdered in your beds by Az's older brother."

"Tch. You drive a hard bargain." Lucy and Jon emptied their pockets, displaying a frightening pile of galleons, sickles and knuts. They counted it out and gave her half, sharing the other half between themselves grudgingly. "So, we're all good for tomorrow."

"Now I've sorted out my boyfriend problems, yes." Conny smiled, stretching, suddenly very tired. "We're ready."

_Cell Forty-Seven, Azkaban Prison, North Sea_

_Dear Khai,_

_We're going on a school trip. Ish. I can't tell you the details, but know that I send this as I leave, so you can't tell Lex or Jah or Ali to come and get me from school. It's going to be good. I'm excited, but also nervous. But yeh, just… I dunno, want to tell somebody. I'm worried because I feel like we're going without quite realizing what's going on. And Conny… you know I love Conny to bits, but she's in deep water. They all look to her to lead them, but I know she can't, because I know her. She desperately doesn't want people to rely on her._

_Ah, well. They followed Lord Cardigan into the Valley of Death, or something like that (Corfax was trying to explain that to me earlier, I'm not quite sure I got it right, but it's not like you'll know any better cuz you're in prison in the north sea n all)._

_I love you, Khai, and I know you're innocent._

_Love,_

_Lucy_


	25. Chapter 24

Chapter Twenty-Four: Into the Madness

Conny, Lucy, Jon, Rissa, Gil and Tilda were the first to arrive at breakfast and the first to leave, before even the most peppy morning person had the chance to grab some muesli. The table was tense, everybody sharing this enormous and dangerous secret. There was a definite crackle of excitement in the air, too, as the group slid through the fake wall into the abandoned classroom.

Conny, whose stomach was full of somersaulting pixies, surveyed her motley crew. They were all changing into their period clothes, Tilda fretting over her mish-mash of stitching fraying. Gil was handsomely clothed as befitted a footman's pageboy, and she realized that very soon he was going to grow into his bulky frame and be a whole different boy. Rissa was helping Lucy into her scullion's dress; herself dressed opulently as a visiting lady in waiting (only Rissa was classy enough to pull off pretending to be upper class). Conny pulled the rough clothes over her underwear and not for the first time felt stupid. Everyone was chatting like they were getting into their costumes for a school nativity play, not as though they were going to die. Not that Conny knew they were going to die for sure, but if the dark wizard didn't get them, the dissolving world inside the painting would soon after. She wasn't brave enough to tell them just how terrible her spellwork was; Lucy had convinced her she could do it, but the more she glanced at the circle, the weaker she realized the runes were. However good Rissa was, an excellent potion catalyst is only a catalyst.

Conny smoothed down the long, dull skirts of her dress and took a moment to breathe. She slipped her wand into a concealed pocket, along with the demiguise fur bracelet. Rissa and Gil had the others, as they had greater access to the castle, and Jon had the thought-reading quill.

"I find this incredibly racist on behalf of medieval welsh Arabs everywhere." Lucy said as Tilda daubed another layer of beige foundation on her face. The good thing was, Madam Meticulous's All-Day Tan and Tone Foundation was made specifically to look like real skin. Tilda had chosen the palest brand, which was about the colour of Conny's skin, and as she spread it over Lucy's face the makeup took on the appearance of real human skin. It did make Lucy's nose slightly larger, but overall the effect was amazing.

"Lucy… you're white." Gil gawped. "I can't deal with it."

"I feel like a ghost." She complained, touching her cheek experimentally. "How do you people cope being this pale? I'm getting snowblind from my own face."

"Hey." The Caucasian contingent of the room took comedic offence. Tilda, whose colouring was more Mediterranean than the rest, merely chuckled. Conny had never asked, but she thought one of the Tirias twins' parents might be Greek.

"Tch. Right, is that everything ready?" Lucy asked, shoving her old clothes into a corner. "Conny, your stuff?"

"Yep." She said with more confidence than she had a right to pretend to have. Gods, if she killed anybody today, she'd never live it down. "Um, do we really want to do this?"

"Of course. Stop being a pansy, let's go."

"On your head." Conny shrugged. "Okay, everybody get into the circle with all of our stuff. Don't you dare move anything."

"It's all tingly." Jon giggled, shivering as he stood inside the thrumming circle.

"It's like getting lots of tiny electric shocks." Conny agreed, before realizing that none of the people she was with knew what electricity was. "Er- never mind. Rissa, you need to pour the potion onto the painting after I say this recitation-"

Conny gestured to the piece of parchment upon which she had written all the incantations. "Okay." Rissa nodded.

"Right. We all sure?"

"For the bazillionth time, yes." Lucy jigged her leg up and down impatiently, stretching her neck. "This makeup is going to give me a rash."

"You can stay here and be rashless?"

"Not happening. Say the Latin, Conny, and let's get this started."

Conny gulped and looked down at the paper. She was never sure how you were meant to pronounce Latin. Lots of common spells, since they were used often, had been calculated and honed to death. This meant that they could be said in just a couple of focus words, some even one. But this spell wasn't your average incendio or wingardium leviosa. In fact, it was crazy. Crazy complicated.

"Aperiatur nobis in opera huius rei simile hominis desperati," She began, wincing as everyone blanched at the terrible pronunciation. "Nos quaerere peregrinari inter mundos. Aperire!"

Rissa's cue came, and she splashed the phial of potion catalyst all over the painting. The paint seemed to run, down the canvas, and pool past the frame, oozing onto the ground. It ran around their feet and filled the floor of the circle, stopping only at the edge of the circle. The rune plates flared into life, cutting through the air with lances of bright light. The paint on the floor rippled and congealed, whorls of colour becoming the outlines of rocks, or the blue shadows of mounds of snow. Trees laden with ice and green with fragrant needles came solidified around the periphery.

Conny lurched, feeling like she was going to fall, and nearly forgot to say the last word of the spell. She'd realized that the spell needed a focus word, a joining integral, but there hadn't been one on the original document, so she'd had to make it up. Several pages of calculations later, she'd done it, but…

"Perclausta!"

Her wand exploded with a ring of sizzling heat, and then the floor fell out from under them.

Lucy swore loudly, but it was covered by Gil's high-pitched girly scream as they plummeted downwards. Conny's gaze snapped up and she saw in the sky a hole through which the ceiling of the classroom was visible. Then, she hit the snowy ground with a painful, frozen thud.

"Mrrfflllgh." She said, spitting snow out of her mouth and sitting up. Beside her, Tilda brushed pine needles and snow off her dress and shivered before helping Rissa to her feet.

"Wow." Lucy said, climbing up onto a rock. "Guys, look. Look at the view from here."

They joined her on the rock. It was the exact same view that Caradoc had painted, down to the fluttering flags and the bright castle in the distance. Amazing. Conny's stomach turned, and she realized they were really here. In the painting. In Caradoc's world.

"Can anyone hear that?" Gil asked suddenly, frowning.

"What?"

"It's like… a buzzing."

They examined the silence. Yes, it was there… it was a low buzz, like a little, almost silent niggle at the very back at your mind. "It's probably nothing. Let's get going."

The group walked towards the castle. Though the main gate was heavily guarded and the moat around the rest should deter any other intruders, Conny's gamble had paid off. The moat was frozen over. Not thick enough for a grown man to walk across carrying weapons or armour, but just right for a group of children. Gil, who was bulky, cracked the ice at one point and had such a hissy fit that he sprinted to the other side faster than Lucy could pocket your best cutlery.

The next thing to do was scale the wall. While the castle of Gwent was impressive, it wasn't new. The wall had handholds aplenty, and they all climbed up until they were peeking over the top of the wall.

"There's a lookout in each of the observatory towers, and archers by the slitty windows."

"It's called a balistraria." Gil mentioned.

"Will knowing what it's called stop us being skewered by Robin Hood and his merry men?" Lucy hissed, ducking as a chainmail-clad sentry walked by on the battlements.

"Yes, it will." Gil said sarcastically. "And if you know that where the sentry's walking is called the crenellations, he won't see you."

"Brilliant. I don't know _why_ we bothered dressing up or bringing wands." Lucy rolled her eyes.

"Stop. Arguing." Conny said, glaring at them. "Let's get down there and start doing this damn thing."

Jon pulled a length of rope out of its concealed compartment underneath his tabard and tied it to a metal stake Gil had driven into the stone at the top of the outer wall. He went down first once they were sure the sentry had left, and held the rope taut for the others. Conny, last, untied it from the stake and jumped down using her carom boots. It was so easy when she was using the magical boots to jump amazing distances and land perfectly. Those who hadn't seen them work before - Gil, Tilda and Rissa – oohed appreciatively at the feat.

"I want a pair of them." Gil said, looking green.

"Well, you've got a sexier outfit and you'll have to deal with that." Lucy replied, her whitened skin itching like crazy. "So, what's the plan?"

Conny led them to the shadow of the battlements - the crenellations, whatever – and took out the parchment upon which she had her plan of attack. "Right. Gil said that the feast won't be until tonight. The position of the sun tells us that it's early morning, maybe… eight o'clock? So, we need to see if we can find Caradoc and warn him before the feast."

"What about our jobs?"

"You might have to do them. The castle will already be up getting ready. Just do as you're told, don't act suspiciously."

"Point of order, I always look suspicious." Lucy said, grinning, but they ignored her. "Eesh, just trying to lighten the atmosphere."

"You're doing great." Conny said acridly, giving her the 'shut up' look. "As I was saying, if you have the chance, find Caradoc. If not, we're rendezvousing every two hours… where was it, Gil?"

"The linen room. It's where they wash everything and heat the water up, so it's really steamy and loud."

"Where is it? For those of us that don't know the blueprints of every medieval castle in our brains." Lucy asked.

"It's on the basement floor, through the kitchens and down the spiral staircase on the left."

"You have a career as the St. Mungo's welcome wizard ahead of you, Gilly."

Gil huffed and looked away. Lucy really wasn't in a good mood today, and this wasn't a great environment for her to vent her spleen.

"Lucy and me will get to the kitchens, check out the scene there. Gil and Jon, you know what to do, and Rissa, Gil explained when you have to appear, right?"

"He did indeed." Rissa smiled, brushing fluff off her lovely dress.

"Okay then. So, phase one is a go-go. Good luck, team."

They all nodded, hesitated a second, and then ran off in their separate directions.

-0-

Lucy was the first to find their base: the kitchens. It was amazing in there, and revolting at the same time. Tens of scullions bustled around; yelling and hollering in old welsh. A burly butcher and his two bearded sons were unloading seven whole pigs. Equal to those, seven spits were being prepped by seven scrawny boys. Wicker baskets the size of ponies were everywhere, stuffed with potatoes, vegetables, freshly picked herbs and above all, salt. There was enough salt to feed a small army.

It stank to high heaven.

Hundreds of chickens and pheasants hung from lines of rope and poles above them, dripping blood and all sorts. A dead fox was being skinned in the corner by a greasy-looking man in a leather hat; a line of girls and boys worked at a frenzied pace plucking pigeons, supervised by a short, fat woman with astonishingly little hair on her head, but curiously a fairly impressive grey moustache.

She spotted them.

"Chuey ynao! Hin yur yudyuch yun ey weneu! Dudyuchwellid iyrr gwaith!"

"Shit." Lucy replied. "Me no speaky welsh."

Matron Moustachio was pointing furiously to the line of pigeon-pluckers, and Lucy did, however, speak international point-and-shout. She bowed low and scurried back to join the end of the line, next to a boy with dirty fingernails and a dirtier grin on his face. Lucy panicked and picked up a spare pigeon. She needed to be able to speak welsh, and fast, or she was going to get found out pretty quickly.

Just as she was about to do something stupid and Conny-esque and mumbled some bad Latin to make up a spell, she caught sight of a line of runes in nearly invisible thread sewn onto the inside of her sleeve cuff. As she watched, the runes flared briefly white and, with an earsplitting shriek that sounded oddly like her grandmother, Lucy suddenly understood everything.

"I dun care who ye're, ye're facked pretey." The boy said, showing a mouth devoid of the presumably important feature of teeth. He grabbed Lucy's bottom with his bloodied hand, and she immediately slapped him away out of reflex.

"Geroff!" She hissed, plucking the pigeon hurriedly as Matron Moustachio walked past. "Don't touch me!"

"But…" He said, looking crestfallen. "Ye're so pretey. An' ye got so many teeth, m'lord…"

Lucy considered sniping at him, but realized that she needed allies. "Yeh. Yeh, I am pretty, aren't I? Tell you what… what's your name?"

"They call me Badan, 'cause I'm strong as a boar!" He flexed his muscles and gave that awful grin again. "An' you? I ain't seen ye in the village."

"I'm… er, I had the pox?"

"Ye dunt look like ye had pox."

"My mum was… er, a very skilled healer. But she died healing me. So me and my… older brother came to the castle, because we heard there was work."

"Ah! Same ere, I norm'ly do the shite rounds in the village."

What interesting work. Lucy bet the interview was harsh for that job. "Great. So, what're we preparing for?"

"Welcoming feast t'night, innit?" Badan said, moving onto another pigeon. "I 'erd the king's comen. Fink it, the king in our castle!"

"The king? Wow. Who else, ey?"

"How'm I ter kno?" Badan asked. "Ey, wait'er second. I'll betcha penny that Lynna know, she's up wit' te gossips. EY, LYNNA!"

One of the girls who were peeling potatoes turned around. "Wassat, Bad?"

"Whose elses lords and ladyfolk comin' ter the castle?"

"Mighty me, all'em, I's reckon. Table-knights, all, an that awfy handsome new feller."

"Oo's sat?"

"E's from the Wiltshires, they say. Small ret'inue, big purse."

"What's his name?" Lucy asked, dreading the answer.

"Sir Malfoy 'f Salisbury. Ooh, e's a pretty'un." Lynna grinned, batting her eyelashes. "I'd give me two front teef to serve 'im 'is dinner."

"You don't got yer two front teef since ye wer twelve, Lynna." Badan joked, finishing another pigeon. Lucy was still on her first one. Then, he did a double take. "Sweet lord in 'eaven."

"Wat?" Lynna turned to follow his gaze, over to where a tall man was holding the door open to someone. It was Conny.

They hadn't quite considered how healthy and pretty they'd be compared to medieval peasantry, and of all of them, Lucy probably fitted in best, with her gaunt features and pasty skin. Conny, however, was flush with health and… ample. Even in her peasant dress, her breasts were prominent and the growing curve of her hips underneath visible. The man who was opening the door for her obvious was taking advantage of Tilda's selective tailoring, which made her assets stand out. Conny looked older than she was, and stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the thin, weedy peasantry.

"I'd give all me teeth fer her. No 'ffence, poxy." He nudged Lucy, who just nodded with acceptance. Conny saw her and shared a glance, but she was busy holding a large dirty pot of water. It was probably heavy for the malnourished servants that usually held it, so she managed fine.

"Look at 'er, all glowy, makin' us rest look like mangy dogs." Lynna whined. "Bet she's one of them witches."

Lucy froze. "Witches?"

"Oh, ay. Yanno, Merlin's sort, an Morganaspawn. They'm all beautiful an' powerful, but they'm evil. Monsters."

"Monsters?"

"Oh, ay. Ye never 'erd the tales? Tha' girl may look beautiful, but when she gets a man in 'er trap, she'll turn into a lamia!"

Phew. Lucy exhaled and took another pigeon, glad that it was just fanciful tales. Unless Conny really was a Lamia, which, while totally cool, would be a worrying development. And a bit of a stumbling block in their friendship, too. Lucy giggled quietly, imagining Conny and Az kissing, and then suddenly Conny turning into a snake-woman.


	26. Chapter 25

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Castle's Many Mysteries

Gil grasped the roll of parchment with sweaty hands and nodded several hundred times as Gregan barked phlegmy spittle into his face.

"Go, you shites!" He ordered, and Gil and the other pages sped off. He travelled down the great hall's by-corridor, at the heels of Ievan, his page-mate. He loved it all, and couldn't stop staring at everything. He was actually in Arthurian times! His favourite period of history, his obsession. He's actually seen a knight striding through the hall earlier! A knight!

"You look like you're simple." Ievan commented. He wasn't a very nice boy, and as a page he had no reason to be. In five years he'd be a squire, and in fifteen, a knight. Then, he'd be able to be as much of a rotter as he liked and people couldn't say anything.

"I just am glad to serve our lord." Gil replied. Ievan couldn't argue with that. And besides, he thought, he'd never read anything about a Sir Ievan in his books, so he wasn't that successful.

"Mmm. Well, you need to deliver that to the quartermaster."

"I will." Gil broke away from Ievan and headed down the next corridor, weaving easily through the castle until he came upon the very busy plan room, where the burly quartermaster was conversing with two carpenters over a plan of something.

"Ah, here's the boy." The quartermaster held out his hand and Gil places his communiqué into it. He knew how to act as a page: you waited to be given a reply or a dismissal. Gil had an honest face, and was thickly set, which made him look sturdy. The carpenters glanced at him, unused, he presumed, to his health and his good manners.

"Hmm. Sir Malfoy wants quartering for a retinue of ten."

"Ten? That's a small retinue for such a man." One of the carpenters noted, grabbing a fresh sheet of hide. "We can accommodate them in the barrack eaves."

"No." The quartermaster shook his shaggy head, pale curls falling out of his messy queue. "We've got twenty of Galahad's men in there already, there's not a mote of space."

"Rats." The carpenter fingered his beard, frowning. "How about the wheat dungeon?"

"Nah, we've got it full of provisions for the tourney." The other carpenter, who was bald as a nut, chipped in. "Unless he doesn't mind his men sleeping on cornflour."

"We just haven't any room." Beardy, the other carpenter, sighed. "His men'll have to stay in the village."

"Boy." The carpenter snapped, and Gil clicked his heels together. "Relay this to Gregan. Malfoy's men will have to take up board in the village."

"Yessir." Gil bowed and left.

"Ey! Wait, boy." Baldy called him back. "I've got our Lord Caradoc's final draft of the carpentry budget. After you've reported to Gregan, take it to him."

Gil nodded and accepted the large roll of paper, bowing again. Yes! This was his chance. He'd be able to get to Caradoc and warn him. This would be easier than he'd thought. He left quickly and almost ran down to Gregan, who was busy penning notes to various dignitaries.

"You're slow, boy." He growled. "What news?"

"The quartermaster and his carpenters could find no room in the castle for Sir Malfoy's men, sir." Gil said. "They suggested they be housed in the village."

"No!" Gregan roared unexpectedly, causing Gil to take a step back. "No, bloody no. Malfoy's men will be house in the castle. Send for the quartermaster to remove Lancelot's men from the northeast sentry tower. There is where Malfoy's men will lodge."

"Yessir."

"Come back afterwards, I want you saddled to meet Malfoy's men down at the bailey gates. And for god's sake, tidy your livery, boy."

"Yessir." Gil bowed and went off again. So many jobs, so little time. He decided first to give the figures to Caradoc, and flitted through the castle, not seeing anybody he knew on the way. He climbed up two floors, the privilege of using the real staircases and not the dreadful spiral stairs that peasants had to use feeling really good. The Lord of the Castle's rooms were located in the northeast of the castle, spanning a whole quarter of its opulent interior. The liveried guards let him through without question- several other pages from the castle and from other lords' delegations were bustling about, too. The Lord was busy greeting the earliest arrivals, and Gil knew that he should leave the figures- especially since they weren't really important – with the Lord's clerk, but he had to see Caradoc. So, after leaving the scroll with an ink-fingered man at a desk, he slid through a small space between a door and a wall and found himself in the archers' hideout of the reception room. Four archers were watching the proceedings below from hidden balconies above, ready attack if any visiting parties should try anything. Gil couldn't go any further, or see Caradoc any better, but he pushed a loose stone aside and peered down.

Caradoc sat on a simple high chair, a beautiful woman beside him. Around his table were his advisors and close friends, and further down the room was a mingling group of nobles and visitors waiting to be presented. Caradoc himself was young and powerfully built, with kind eyes and a tired smile. He had wavy, tawny hair that was confined to a silver circlet, and had a fine sword buckled at his hip. Althea beside him shone, her radiant blonde hair twisted into braids of gold and green ribbon, an astounding ocean-blue dress doing her slim form justice. Gil was enthralled.

He leant closer to his peephole to get a closer look, but his boots scuffed loudly against the stone floor. One of the archers snapped their gaze over to where he was hidden, so he backed away and slunk back out of the lord's quarters to deliver Gregan's missive to the quartermaster. It was strange… strange that Gregan had been so insistent. Of course, if Malfoy was anything like Conny and Lucy had described, he was a bad, manipulative person, but it struck Gil as odd that Gregan should disagree so strongly on such a simple point.

Something was obviously wrong.

-0-

Jon wasn't faring well. His job was simple: relay messages, don't step on any toes. But Jon was clumsy and his English wasn't perfect. Even with the frankly poor translation charm on his cuff, he could hardly understand the thick welsh brogue of the castle denizens. He'd been shouted at twice, then slapped, then spat on, and now he was hiding in the basement.

It was chock full of sacks of grain and flour, but everything was full of weevils, so he didn't linger in one place too long, secretly quite scared of the shiny black skittering bugs. While here he was safe from the monstrous pagemaster Gregan, he also wasn't doing anybody any good.

Jon thought that Gregan's shouting must have burst an eardrum, because he was suffering a growing headache. An incessant whining, like a buzz, filled him brain and set his teeth on edge. He paced angrily, wondering what he should do. If he was caught just sauntering around the castle willy-nilly, he'd be put to work. Since he'd already vanished and hid somewhere, there was no way he could go back out and join the fray. He sighed, massaging his temples to try and get rid of the headache.

He was restlessly pacing across the floorboards near the back of the basement when it happened. He felt the ground creak and give under his feet. Curious, he got down on his hands and knees, frowning, and saw that a patch of floorboards were newer than the others, and slightly warped. He took out something Conny had called a crow bar, which he found strange as it looked nothing like a crow, and jammed it between the floorboards, prizing one of them up. Underneath, in old, rotting wood, was a second floor. Except this one had hinges and a ring.

"Trapdoor." He breathed, grinning. He'd hit the jackpot. Ancient castles were bound to have catacomb-esque secret passages. Jon prized a couple more planks up and careful tucked them under a sack of corn, trying his luck with the ring. The trapdoor stuck fast, rooted into place, but he dug his heels in and wrenched it open, landing painfully on his arse.

"Lumos." He whispered, the tip of his wand lighting up brilliant white. He peered down into the gloom- just blackness. A rusted ladder promised a way down, so he put his wand between his teeth and maneuvered his way onto the slippery ladder. The poorly cast iron bent in his hands from age, but he slowly lowered himself into the gloom, the stench of effluent and death striking his nose as he got closer to the bottom. He appeared to be in some sort of tunnel system. The walls were low and made of slimy, algae-covered bricks, with several rust-stained watermarks showing that these tunnels spent the wet season flooded. His boots were wet with muck as soon as he'd hopped off the ladder.

The buzzing increased to a screech, and Jon whipped about, seeing a shadow flit past in the corner of his eye. Nothing. He held his wand shakily; increasing the light's range, sweat beading on his forehead. Calm yourself, Jonmarc, he thought, they're tunnels. There'll be rats. You're a big boy, you can manage rats.

Another flicker. This time, Jon let off a wordless flipendo, which was wide and bright blue with fright. It blew a fist-sized chunk in the brickwork, but found no target.

Jon decided he should get moving, or he'd go spare down here chasing shadows. He knew that the king's quarters were northeast, and that the linen steaming room- their rendezvous point- was on the way. He considered his options before twirling his wand gently. A long, thin, thread of magical light pooled out of his lumos, dropping to the floor. He tied it to the ladder. Just in case, Jon thought. Just in case he got lost down here.

-0-

Conny waited in the linen steaming dungeon, a rash spreading over her neck as the rough material of her dress rubbed. She may have sewn all the defensive runes she could pronounce into their clothes, but perhaps had overlooked comfort. She was here under the pretense of picking up a bowl of hot water for the Lord of somewhere, and she couldn't wait long. She'd caught the attention of almost every male in the castle, for the worst reasons. Lord Somewhere had leered down her dress all the time he'd demanded a pail of hot washing water, and she reckoned that when she went back she'd have to restrain herself from pouring it all over his lecherous hands. These things were to be expected, she supposed, as she had what was considered the peak of attractive qualities in Medieval Wales: a full set of teeth.

She'd never complain about going to the dentist's again.

A sweaty hand grasped hers, and Conny was about to curse them to high heaven when she saw Gil through the gloom.

"Wassup?"

"I think I have a lead." He whispered, when Lucy, Tilda close behind her, joined them from a billowing cloud of steam.

"What?"

"Well, 'Lord' Malfoy of Salisbury is on his way." Gil said. "I'm to meet him on horseback in an hour."

"Cock." Lucy said, nodding, "The servants said the same thing."

"But, Caradoc must know that Malfoy's a guest at this shin-dig, right? He must be informed?"

Gil shook his head. "He was really busy, I don't think he organized this by himself. And I think that Gregan, the pagemaster, is hiding something."

"Hiding something?"

"Malfoy's travelling with a very small entourage. I'm wiling to bet they're all dark wizard cronies of his. The quartermaster, he wants to house the entourage in the village since they don't have much room- I think Malfoy is a last minute addition. But, Gregan went ballistic when I relayed this to him, and ordered the quartermaster to put then in the north-east tower."

"The north-east tower?" Conny asked, remembering something. "That's where the king sleeps. I took water to his steward earlier."

"He must have paid Gregan off."

"Which means he's been here longer than we'd thought." Conny summarized, frowning. "He's got an all-access pass to the castle tonight."

"Everyone will be drunk from the feast." Lucy nodded, pulling pigeon feathers out of her fingernails. They stood silently, mulling everything over.

"Where's Jon?" Gil suddenly asked.

"I dunno. He must have been sent to do something, so he couldn't get here."

"He might be down in the village. I saw some pageboys leave the castle earlier."

"Okay. Let's hope he's fine."

"So, what's the plan from here?"

Everyone turned to Conny, who they seemed to erroneously believe knew what the hell they were doing. "Er… well, we still need to get close to Caradoc. But it doesn't seem like that's going to happen. So, Gil… you need to get as much of Malfoy's plan as you can when you pick him up. Lucy, wait until the food starts getting served and see if you can't add some sleeping draught to Malfoy's guards' meals. Rissa, you need to make your entrance soon, and see if you can get an audience with Caradoc, or with Althea. Tilda, you go with her as her servant, she'll look suspicious by herself… I suppose I'll keep with the water until I hear something."

"Okay." The all nodded.

"Can anyone hear that buzzing?" Lucy asked before they all turned to leave.

Conny gulped. "It's nothing. Don't worry about it. Let's go."

-0-

Rissa and Tilda left the linen steaming dungeon covertly, as it would be strange for a visiting noblewoman to go anywhere near the servants' area of the castle. Rissa adjusted her dress and checked her hair before striding into one of the heavily decorated corridors as if she owned the place. Which, she supposed, she was probably entitled to.

Rissa did not like Tilda. That had never been a secret: they were diametrically opposed as Gryffindors and Slytherins were wont to be. Even off the draught of peace, Rissa was not all smiles and laughs, and still retained aspects of her old personality: there is only the now, and the future is not set in stone. She had very little time for seers. Especially seers like Tilda, who were as two-faced as it was possible to be. Dozy, companionable Tilda Tirias, all coppery skin and lazy smiles? Pah. A well performed lie if Rissa had ever seen one. Tilda was cleverer than she looked, and not above manipulation. Like how she had manipulated Conny into taking them on this quest by revealing information. Visions seers had were not like that, they could not possibly be related so closely to the seer's own life. Tilda knew something she was not telling them, and pretending that her knowledge came from her seer's power was just blatant falsehood.

"Frowning does not become somebody of your standing, my lady." Tilda said facetiously, smiling ever so slightly. "How are you enjoying the broiling pot of human emotions?"

"I am just fine." Rissa replied icily, trying to slip back into the old habits. How easy it had been, when nothing touched her, no words or actions pierced her heart, no elation clouded her judgment. When anger had been foreign and powerless over her.

"I'm sure you are." Said Tilda, clicking her heels as she walked. "You must remember that you have a face that shows your thoughts now, Clarissa."

"And you must remember that I see through your charade, Matilda."

Tilda flinched mockingly, raising an eyebrow. "We all got to make a living."

"And lying to overemphasise your use to Conny is a champion way to do that?"

"Look at you, with your use of nicknames." Tilda cooed, turning immediately stony-faced and pliant as a visiting dignitary rounded the corner and walked past them. His eyes widened and he bowed low to Rissa. She smirked once he'd passed, pleased by the gesture, before returning to her argument with Tilda.

"Am I not allowed? They are, after all, my friends. And I do not have to put up a false face for them to like me."

"Cutting." Tilda retorted, directing Rissa to the left. "Let's call a spade a spade, Rissa. If we're talking about false faces, you come up very early on in the conversation."

"There is nothing false about me."

"Oh, tsh, you're kidding yourself." Tilda said, her condescending manner harsh compared to the amusing observance she usually maintained. "How long will it be until the Clarissa Mothley Lucy remembers is back? You know a few weeks is all you need to descend back into chaos."

"You assume much."

"I don't assume. I know."

"Whatever type of seer you are, Matilda, you do not know half the things you profess to. Speak of those falsehoods. In fact, we are here on your false pretence."

"Wrong." Tilda smiled again, her eyelids heavy. "We're here on my very good guess."

Rissa paused, fuming at Tilda's naked truth. A guess? The girl had risked their lives on a guess? She realized something, something very base about Tilda's personality and motivations. "You are a gambler. When you cannot know the future, you pretend you can, and gamble the outcome."

"My gamble paid off this time."

"You cannot use our lives as chips, Matilda! We are not a hand you can play!"

"Voice down, my lady." Tilda advised, but her face was smug and heavy with her ploy. "We're here."

"Here?"

"Caradoc's bit of the castle. Now, if all goes well, we request an audience with him, and when we get to him, we spill the beans and hey presto, crisis averted."

"That is not how it will happen, is it?" Rissa asked, some subtle part of her mind picking up on the lie. "Do not try to deceive me, Matilda."

"Why would I ever do such a terrible thing?" Tilda grinned, adjusting Rissa's bodice quickly. "And what happens, happens."

-0-

Gil was glad that he'd taken riding lessons when he was little.

Being half-blooded, his dad a muggle, Gil had a very different childhood to the others. Not that he'd admit it, like when Conny and Corfax had been chatting about primary schools. There was some undeniable status that came with blood purity, and he wasn't going to deny himself that just to say how badly he'd got on at St. Andrew's C of E Primary. Still, a muggle father really… it sounded weak. He was a man, and he should come from a magical man equally. This was not to be, unfortunately.

Gil trotted down through the village at the foot of Caradoc's castle, the up and down motion giving him a headache. His old horse, Knickers, had been much better behaved than the pony he rode on now, which was ornery and uncomfortable. Still, he was riding an Arthurian pony! In an Arthurian village! Think of the good stuff, Gil, he thought, and it'll all be okay. He hoped. He was beginning to think that this was going to be a lot more complicated than he'd believed, and that it wasn't going to be the holiday sightseeing extravaganza he'd hoped for.

The crowds along the market row parted and jostled as he went, seeing the colours of Lord Caradoc on his tabard and livery. At the gate, the interruption of the high wall that surrounded the castle and village, he waited on horseback. On the distant horizon, he saw a pocket of black figures cantering closer. Gil was looking forwards to finally seeing this Lucius Malfoy, who didn't seem like a nice fellow at all.

One thing Gil hadn't understood was if Malfoy was such a dark wizard, why not just barge in and curse everybody? He'd found his answer just a few minutes before, when two things had happened at once: a grizzly warlock had cursed a fruit-seller using a huge, gnarled staff. His curse had been weak, much weaker than it would have been with a modern wand, and Gil suspected it had something to do with improper wood and cores. Then, seemingly at the same time, four platemail-clad guards had jumped out of the shadows and bore the warlock down, there and then. They dragged him screaming and misfiring flipendos at passing traders.

So, public or malevolent use of magic resulted in the guards going ballistic. It would also, Gil realized, alert Caradoc to Malfoy's presence, and he'd have time to make preparations and launch a counter-attack.

"Ho! Colours of Salisbury on the horizon!" The watchman called.

"Raise the cullis!"

"Heave!"

Four men at a winch laboriously raised the huge heavy portcullis gate. Gil's stomach erupted into angry butterflies as Malfoy's retinue approached, despite the fact that he should, in theory, have no problem. They came closer, and Gil squinted, wishing he had his glasses on. Slowly, the head of the procession, the pivotal villain himself, came into focus. He was in his early thirties, very handsome, with long, straight blonde hair whipping about his shoulders and a square face. His sneer and the vengeance in his grey eyes, however, definitely identified him as a bad guy. Gil swallowed, sweat beading on his forehead. No pressure.

"Hark, Sir!" The watchman greeted him as he slowed to a walk, moving through the gate. Past the first line of defense. "It is my honour to welcome you to-"

"Be quiet." Malfoy instructed him. The watchman went pink with indignation then pale with fright as Malfoy turned his cold eyes on him. "Boy."

Gil snapped to attention, edging his horse closer, and bowed as low as his saddle would allow. "Your lordship."

"Are your streets wide enough for my cargo?" Malfoy asked, gesturing to the large covered wagon behind him. Gil wondered what was inside.

"Aye, sir."

"Well then, lead us to the castle proper. And be quick about it, you've dawdled enough already."

Gil quashed a surge of dislike for the man and dutifully led him and his retinue back through the village, scattering the peasantfolk out of the way to make space for Malfoy's wagon. The trip up to the castle was frustratingly slow, and Malfoy seemed to be in a hurry. It was by now nearing lunchtime, but the great feast would begin at sunset. Judging by the fact that it was wintertime in the painting's world, Gil thought sunset might be early. So they didn't have much time at all.

The unsaddled the horses at the stable, the ostler overworked as it was, taking up even more time. Malfoy insisted that his own men unpack his wagon, and from it they removed a very large and heavy crate that Gil immediately sensed something wrong with. Whatever was in there was going to prove dangerous.

Gregan shouted at him a bit more, and shared a significant look with Malfoy before he told Gil to show them to the guard tower in the northeast wing. The hammocks had just been vacated by a grumbling group of Lancelot's men, and Malfoy's retinue wasted no time in claiming them.

"Boy." Malfoy said lazily, snapping his fingers. "Bring us some meat. Preferably raw."

Gil nodded dubiously, wondering what on earth Malfoy could want raw meat for.


	27. Chapter 26

Chapter Twenty-Six: She Just Won't Shut Up

Jon was lost in the dark. The thread of light he spooled from his wand was rapidly dimming, and he felt hungry and drained. He was sure that he was heading northeast, but each turn seemed familiar, tunnels differing by one discoloured brick or another, all damp and dark and hopeless.

He knew he should follow his thread back to the ladder. Wizards knew their Greek myths as well as muggles, and at this point, Jon's insecurities began playing at his mind. What if he never got out? What if the threat had snapped? What if… what if something was following him?

He whirled around, feeling exposed, eyes wide in the gloom, hand shaking so that his ball of light caused the shadows to clamour and creep at the corners of his eyes. It's okay, he tried to think, but his heart was thumping in his ears so loud that it drowned the thought out. There must be a spell to find where you were. What was it? He'd no idea. Jon wasn't very good at making new spells up, like Conny could, but he felt uncomfortable enough to try.

He focused on what he wanted to do. Find a way out, be shown the way out, and be out of here. He calmed himself, realizing just how deeply and quickly he'd been breathing. Now find a good determiner in Latin. Jon cringed, the only Latin he could remember being 'Caecillius est in hortum sedet', which was no use here. Crap. He really knew no Latin at all.

Perhaps old French would work? Most old French came from Latin anyway. Right. "_Cherchier." _He tried, jabbing his wand upwards. There was a puff of acrid silver smoke, and then, all of a sudden, his light went out. The line of thread disconnected from the tip of his wand and fell to the floor, still and lambent in the total darkness.

"Merde." He swore. "_Cherchier."_

No luck again. He tried for the life of him to remember being sat in the tiny classroom of wizard children. Mme De Guille at the front, making them recite the roots of words. Search, from Middle English, from Old French cherchier, from Latin… from Latin… from circare!

"_Circare!_" Jon yelled, his voice echoing down the tunnels and dislodging brick dust from the ceiling. He wand violently heated up, burning until he dropped it. It wobbled on the floor for a moment, before starting to spin clockwise. Jon watched it for a minute, and then, his headache increasing, remembered something. "Circare, late Latin, from early Latin circus… 'To circle'. I'm an imbecile."

His echo seemed to agree with him. He picked up his wand, which stung his fingers as it tried to rotate. "Stop it, you."

The wand did, but begrudgingly. Jon felt tiredness overwhelm him, and slumped down against the smooth brick of the tunnels, his head killing him. The buzzing was getting progressively worse, like the insistent sound of a billywig hovering inside his head.

He sat there for maybe an hour, calming himself down, trying several hodgepodge experimental spells, before deciding that it was no good. He'd have to follow his string back to the first ladder and admit defeat. Perhaps he wasn't so useful after all.

Jon was about to stand up to retrieve the end of his string, when, to his horror, it moved.

The string slowly, insistently, began to slide away from him, back to where he'd come, pulled by someone… or something. Jon felt sick as he scrambled to pick up his end, allowing it to become slack, and held his wand up ready to face whatever was at the other end, though he was so tired that he didn't think he could do much damage.

Only following the string back did he realize how far he'd walked. It was impossible- the castle wasn't this big. His dread mounted, each step painfully loud against the damp floor, at each turn Jon thought he was going to see a hundred different nightmares- a platoon of guards, their sword ready to cut him down… a sinister, long-fingered erkling, drawing him towards its light, reading to strangle him… the mangled bodies of Conny and Lucy…

The last turn came. Jon steeled himself, offering a silent prayer to any god that was listening. He dropped the thread and waited, his breath hitching in his bursting chest, and peered around the corner.

There was no beastie.

There was no ladder, either.

-0-

Conny got her chance later in the day than she'd have liked.

She'd been charged with taking an ewer of hot water from the boiling rooms to Caradoc's chamber. He'd closed the reception hall and was starting to get ready for tonight's feast, which included a wash. She very quickly traversed the castle, almost spilling great sloshes of water over the opulent carpets. Once admitted to his quarters, Conny slowly took everything in, making her way to Caradoc's bedchamber.

With her luck, he was deep in conversation with Sir Bors. Could she interrupt? Tell him that Malfoy was coming? A servant shouldn't talk to her master. She set the ewer down on his table carefully, and at that moment, a man came in with a beautiful basket.

"A token of thanks for your hospitality, from the Lord of Salisbury." The man said.

"Put it over there with the rest of them." Caradoc instructed impatiently, his face worried. Conny, the word 'Salisbury' having piqued her interest, made sure to catch a glimpse at the gift. Strange. In the basket was what looked to be a huge egg, made of pure silver. What a gift! For an evil man, Malfoy sure knew how to give a present. Conny could only linger for so long, and Caradoc was in the middle of what she now knew was an argument between Caradoc and Bors, so she wouldn't have a chance. So, she shuffled off, feeling disappointed with herself.

It was when she got outside that Conny knew something was up.

A normal servant wouldn't have noticed it. A normal child wouldn't have noticed it either, but Conny, who was on high alert, immediately noticed that something was wrong. When she'd walked into Caradoc's personal quarters, she'd noticed with a slight smirk that one of them had the most humungous nose with a spectacular plume of ginger nasal hair sticking out of it. Now, his nose was pretty much all you could see jutting from his helmet, as it was for any of Caradoc's personal guards because they were so heavily armoured.

Nose-man was gone, which was strange, because he'd been complaining to his mate that he had to stand shift right through the feast, but then his mate had reminded him that they were going to the pub later on for some carousal. Two burly, indistinct men had replaced these two relatively good-natured guards. Both in the right uniform, but nose-man wasn't there.

That wouldn't have been too strange. The guard could have changed, but Conny, on a whim, ran to catch up and found that surely enough nose-man and his friend were slouching down a corridor laughing about being relieved from duty early.

"Ey." She caught up with them, and what had been glares melted into lust as soon as she approached. Tch. Men.

"Well, 'afternoon, m'dear." Nose-man said, leering. "What canna big man like m'self doferya?"

"How come you got off early?"

"I dun care, all I know's tha' I'm off early 'n I'd like ta seeya in my hammock, m'dear." He waggled his eyebrows, which, now he'd taken off his helmet, she found matched his ridiculous nose-hair.

"Er, no thanks." She said, deciding he wasn't the right one to appeal to. "Ey, you know?"

His eyes widened, and he shook his head. "I dunno, miss. They said we could 'ave th'afternoon off, in honour of th' feast. Bit of luck, tha'."

"Okay. Thanks."

"'S no problem, miss." He bowed slightly, and Conny's heart melted. He was the first man who'd been the slightest bit civil to her, and that was a relief and a half.

"Well, I'm gunnie get Merv, canna let you two make googly eyes much longer w'out puking." Nose-man sighed, leaving Conny and the man alone. He scratched his head awkwardly.

"I'm Llewellyn." He said. "I ain't seen y'round."

"No, I'm new." She said, wishing that she hadn't lingered. "How long've you been a guard, then?"

"Oh, only three years." Llewellyn said, smiling, "But my da's cap'n of the village guard, so I've got promoted pretty fast. 'N miss, if you don't awful mind me saying, even Morgana's beauty pales 'gainst yours."

"Er… thanks, Llewellyn, but… I'm, um, already betrothed."

"Ah," he said, smiling shyly, "Sa'shame, but the man's a lucky one."

"You think?"

"Oh, aye. An' if he's ever a fool enough to let you go, I got a good job an' I'm no drunk or wife-hitter."

"I'm sure, but… ah, Llewellyn, can you keep a secret?"

"On my life, miss." He bowed profusely.

"There's a plot." She whispered, close enough to smell the sweat underneath his chainmail. "To kill Lord Caradoc."

"There're always those who take 'ffence to our Lordship, miss."

"No, not something like that. You've heard of the Lord of Salisbury, right?"

"Sir Malfoy, aye."

"Well, think about it. I bet you'd never heard of him in your life before a few months ago."

"S'not unusual, lord's dying and sons inheriting titles all the time. Why, our Lord Caradoc inherited his not four winter's ago."

"You don't think it's weird that he appears for the first time on the most chaotic night of the biggest event you've had in years? That he's come with a tiny retinue, and he'd displaced Lancelot's men it the north-east tower right above your Lordship's own quarters?"

"Things're strange, but it int my business. If Sir Malfoy comes at m'lord with a spear, _then_ that's my business." He said, shaking his head apologetically. "You sure it int jus' scullions' gossip? They'm always making things up."

"No. I'm sure. Llewellyn, I need you to watch out. Please. Those guards who replaced you, I'll bet they're Malfoy's men. He's got a grudge against Caradoc." Conny pleaded, thinking they didn't have much time left. The buzzing was getting insistent, and she didn't want to admit to herself or the others what she knew. It'd get louder, and louder, until it began to resolve into a melody… the maddening song of the fwooper, the runic number four…

"You seem a nice lass, so… look, if I see sumt really weird, I'll look into it. 'N if this Lord of Salisbury does make a sword at m'lorship, you can be surer than sunrise I'll defend 'im to my death."

"That's more like it!" She smiled, and put her hands on his arm briefly. "Thank you for your trust, Llewellyn. It means a lot."

He nodded, looking dubious, and blushed slightly. "You should get back to your duties, miss. Wun't wanta see you in trouble."

"No. Thanks again."

Llewellyn bowed and saluted her, with one last look strode off, looking perplexed. Conny hoped that she hadn't given them away, but he really did seem like a good person, and there was a great advantage to be had in a young man with a big sword.

In the meanwhile, she had to figure out what was going on. Conny was good at solving puzzles. She always had been. Even the handle of her wand was like a puzzle box; its pieces perfectly curved to the shape on the round baton, each a slightly different shape, able to be moved around within the handle. She'd never solved the puzzle yet, but she had solved others. The cryptic crossword, the tainted potion ingredients, this whole shambles with Caradoc… that was her thing. She felt like it should be simple, that she should be able to figure out what Malfoy was going to do. He couldn't just attack Caradoc- that would result in his own demise, what with Caradoc being a wizard himself, his wife being a witch, and a hundred armed guards trained to deal with witches and wizards if they happened to attack on standby. After all, this was before the statute of secrecy. Morgana, Merlin, Elivares, all those characters existed and used magic openly.

Equally, though, Conny didn't think Malfoy was the type to get revenge from afar. She knew Slytherins, and they generally like plotting more than any other means of vengeance, but there was also a streak of showmanship present. She felt that Malfoy would need to see Caradoc die, would want to be there to finish him off, to set things right in his eyes. So, he couldn't just poison the food, and there were food tasters anyway. He'd want Caradoc to look him in the eyes when he died, which ruled out backstabbing, in both the literal and figurative sense.

She was passing the corridor adjacent to the northeast watchtower, having climbed some stairs so she looked like she was busy, when something penetrated the loud and insistent buzzing in her ears. It sounded like scraping, like a heavy object was being pushed along a stone floor. She went towards it, finding a locked wooden door between herself and the perpetrators.

"…Get the gardener out of the way…"

"Macnair'll widen the grate, we can lower it down…"

"Bastard thing bit half my cloak off…"

"You sure the roof's weak there?"

"…Had Crabbe in the tunnels since yesterday. It's right under his chair."

"Hated being down there. It's creepy as f-"

There was a loud bang and a very rude word as Crabbe dropped the crate on Macnair's foot. He spent the next five minutes cussing out and physically beating up Crabbe, while Conny tried to get anything useful out of them. They sorted it out and appeared to recover.

"You sure we can't use magic, Malfoy?"

A new voice joined the fray. It was lazy, drawling, posh, and everything Conny had expected. "Absolutely not. Did I not spend quite a while, as I recall, making it abundantly clear that we absolutely cannot use magic? If it were that easy, I would not have had to resort to… these means."

"But, _why_?" Crabbe asked, sounding like a whiny five-year old.

"You honestly must be the dullest man in the world, Crabbe. This castle is warded to the teeth. A single stunning spell will alert the cretin to our presence."

"But you let me blast the tunnels." Crabbe pointed out.

Malfoy sighed. "Yes, Crabbe, because the fool hasn't warded the tunnels. I doubt he knows of their existence."

"Oh."

"Oh is right. Now, make sure the hoist and pulley are secure. They'll all only be distracted by the feast for a while." Malfoy instructed. "Muggles are the most stupid of creatures. That contraption is ridiculous."

"It's getting the job done, boss."

"It's still stupid."

Gods, Conny thought, Malfoy sounded like a petulant child. This man was evil enough to hunt down the man who'd fallen in love with his sister in cold blood, yet bitched about muggles like Conny's mum after a bad perm. Power in the hands of the stupid was like uranium in the hands of a toddler: dangerous and can be prevented by good parenting.

"Goyle and Nott should have done their job by now. Nott should be coming any minute to report…"

At that moment, Conny decided she should leave. Except that Nott wasn't coming any minute. He was already here.

Her was a huge man, and he grabbed Conny from behind. She tried to shriek, but he clasped a large, meaty hand over her mouth and squeezed her hard, causing her to double over in pain. She tried to bite him but her mouth was shut tight, and he lifted her up off her feet. Conny kicked and writhed in the air, her head spinning, slamming her fists uselessly into his abdominal muscles. Nott barreled through the door, surprising the three bad guys inside, who drew their wands instinctively. Malfoy's eyes widened, and he lowered his hand.

"Shut the bloody door." He hissed at Crabbe, who sidestepped Nott and shut the door quickly. Conny fumed and shouted and spat into Nott's palm, but it only made her face all covered in spit and him grunt and squeeze tighter. "What's this, Nott? Picking up servants?"

"She was listening outside the door." He croaked, struggling to contain her.

"Probably one of your admirers, ey, Malfoy?" Macnair sneered, "I heard two scullions gossiping about how handsome the Lord of Salisbury is."

"Maybe." Malfoy said suspiciously, eyeing Conny. Oh gods, she thought, he's onto me. He knows. "There's something off. The muggle peasants are all… drawn, thin, and toothless. This girl…"

"I can tell you she's got all her teeth, she keeps trying to bite me." Nott said.

"So she's not a peasant. Hang on. Check her for a wand."

"You think she's a witch?"

"I wouldn't put it past Caradoc to have a few witches and wizards on his staff. For protection." Malfoy said. Nott held her still while Macnair frisked her, and it wasn't long till he felt the side of her torso and found where her wand was concealed under her dress. He ripped the side open with a small knife from his belt and prized the wand out, tossing it to Malfoy.

"Hmm. Very… refined for the Middle Ages. I'm not good with wands. Sphinx, though, I think."

"Sphinx? They haven't got sphinxes in England yet."

"So, either she's from Egypt, which I doubt because she's white." Malfoy said, his piercing grey eyes searching her. "So, Caradoc must have brought her along. Which doesn't work either, because she's not older than fourteen and he's been here four years. Which means she wouldn't have her wand from Ollivander's yet, so she wouldn't have had a wand."

Conny's heart sank.

"Which means what?"

"Which means that you, Macnair, have poor problem-solving skills." Malfoy said, holding his wand up to Conny's forehead. "Take your hand off her mouth, Nott."

Nott obediently removed his hand, wiping it on the breeches of his guard's uniform disgustedly. Conny spat at Malfoy with all the phlegm she could muster, and it landed on his cheek. She grinned with joy, until she realized that he was a Death Eater and she was wandless inside a disintegrating painting.

Malfoy wiped it off with his sleeve and sneered. "Well, you have no manners. I suppose you must be a muggle-lover too, like Caradoc."

"Muggles, wizards, monkeys, I go for whatever. They all rank above twats like you." She said, sounding braver than she felt. His wand was very ostensibly digging into her temple.

"Oh, she's a big girl." Malfoy smiled. "I don't have to lift a finger to put you through a world of pain, girl."

"You can't lift a finger at all, Malfoy." She replied, sending his smile right back to him. "What was it? You so much as stun me and Caradoc knows you're here. And then your whole charade is up."

"Thinks she's clever."

"Knows she's clever."

A vein in Crabbe's forehead was bulging at her cheek.

"Have you ever been at the receiving end of the Cruciatus curse, girl?" he said, stepping closer so that she could see the fine lines around his eyes.

"Actually, I have." She told him. "And after Avery did it, I sent him to the bottom of the Black Lake."

Malfoy froze. "…Avery?"

"That's right. You won't be the first Death Eater I finish off."

"No wonder we haven't heard from him…" Nott muttered. "You seriously killed him, girl? Or are you just messing with us?"

"She might have read his name in the papers during the war, knew who we were, trying to throw us off track." Crabbe reasoned, cracking his knuckles.

Malfoy silenced him with a swift gesture. "No… no, I know her. I know who you are, girl. Alexi mentioned that he had trouble killing a troublesome little friend of his sister's… David DeHayersae's daughter."

"I was at school with David DeH." Macnair, who was at least ten years older than Malfoy and Crabbe, spoke up. "He wasn't exactly… the Death Eater killing type."

"But apparently his daughter is." Said Malfoy. "So. Why don't you tell us why you're here, David's daughter?"

"Oh, you know, I heard the Middle Ages was great for some mean summer snow."

Malfoy gritted his teeth. "I may not be able to curse you, but Macnair has a knife, and I can tell you that it's really rather sharp."

Macnair gave a wheezy chuckle. "I love to spill me some tainted blood."

Conny gulped. "Can a girl not just be curious?"

"In my experience, no."

"Damn. Well, um, I came for… History of Magic field trip?"

"You're funny." Malfoy said. "It's insufferable. That you would go so far to help a blood traitor and coward like Caradoc."

"Is Caradoc a traitor and a coward, or just unlucky in love?" Conny asked, her anger mounting, thinking that maybe she could put him off-balance. "Hey, Malfoy, I hear your sister's hot."

"DON'T SAY A WORD ABOUT ALTHEA!" He screamed, his wand breaking the skin on her forehead, sending a tiny trickle of blood down the side of her face. Conny winced, biting the edge of her tongue in pain. "Filthy halfblooded girl! I'll kill you!"

"Bite me."

That suggestion seemed to change something in Malfoy. He calmed down, a nasty, cancerous smile spreading across his face. He chuckled, and his goons seemed to catch on, sharing the joke. Conny faltered.

"I'll tell you what, Miss DeHayersae." Malfoy started, removing his wand. "I'm not going to bite you. I haven't got the time, and I don't care to spend hours weaseling the truth out of your discourteous mouth. So, I've got something else that can bite you."

"Is it Crabbe? Because he looks up for it."

Malfoy backhanded her, cricking her neck, one of his rings scraping another gouge out of her face. "No. But it's said that I'm a generous man. I'm far too cultured to kill a girl in cold blood, and in the muggle way at that. Very messy, blood. So, I'm going to give you a chance."

He snapped his fingers at Macnair. "Rope, Macnair. Bind her hands and feet, and grab her wand. We'll put her down in the tunnels… five minutes before we lower the crate?"

He smiled, and Conny, blood fogging her vision, realized that she was about to die. Again.

-0-

Lucy had a large scar on the palm of her hand where she'd once pressed one of Jahnen's cigars into it. She'd though at the time it had hurt like hell, and had never pressed a hot object to her flesh again. She hadn't, however, banked on visiting the medieval era in her life.

As it turned out, it was far too wasteful to employ such a devilish contraption as a pronged instrument to lift burning hot food from where it was cooking to the platter upon which it was to be served. She'd previously (and perhaps foolishly) not considered how damn hot a chargrilled pigeon would be.

"Ow, ow, beep, beep, and beeping beep." She said, blowing on her bright red hands. This was so not right. With no access to either healing spells or muggle remedies, she was in constant pain. Badan was doubled over laughing at her ineptitude, juggling burning pigeons like it was nothing. His hands were black with thick, dead layers of skin from all the hard work he did. Lucy's, on the other hand, here soft and clean and not used to sizzling pigeon surprise.

Madam Moustache thumped two huge pans together with a resounding clang, and Lucy nearly dropped the pigeon she was taking over to one of the huge metal platters that at least fifty other pigeons must have been steaming quietly on.

"Aight!" Moustache cried, her voice carrying through the kitchen. "Serve tha food, and don't ye dare mess up! Our Lord the King's at tha table!"

Everyone cheered for some reason. Lucy fist-pumped along with them, unsure of exactly what was going on. That seemed to be instructions, because everyone seemed to start moving. Lucy scurried after Badan and Lynna, who were grabbing one of the handles of the pigeon-tray. She took one and a couple of others kids held the others, and their combined effort lifted the platter. They shuffled like a many-legged monster from the kitchens, along the relatively short connecting corridor between the kitchens and the huge great hall, which was twice the size of Hogwarts' one, but had a very low ceiling and an almost crushing abundance of huge grey slabs of weathered brick. All the guests were seated, Caradoc at the head of the huge darkwood banquet table, the King beside him. Lucy had never thought that King Arthur, the guy who'd pulled the sword out of the stone and all that, would be quite so… beardy. He was beardy.

Lucy felt like someone's eyes were on her, so, while she was lifting the platter onto the centre of the table, she scanned the table. There, about halfway along, Rissa Mothley sat like she belonged amongst the nobles. Lucy sometimes felt strange, because all things said and done, their houses were pretty evenly in favour. Or they used to be. After Lucy's parents had gone and her brothers had earned their unsavoury reputation, sure, the House of Akhet had sort of distanced themselves from the Ra family. Before that, though, Lucy and Rissa had comfortably rubbed shoulders on the same, high, social stratum.

They put the platter down and scurried off to get the next load of food. Lucy was sweaty and burned from all the hard kitchen work, and there seemed no shortage of food to be brought out. She watched Rissa's idly smile get wider and wider as Lucy got more and more haggard, wondering just how many tureens of carrots the nobles would possibly want to eat. Finally, they were done, and Lucy was made to stand by the wall with a big jug of wine. She had to refill all the nobles' cups when the clicked at her, and Lucy Ra was not the type to take people clicking at her. She'd only just managed to take working at Auntie Fats' grubby café, and people in Luton in 1984 knew very well not to click their fingers at a dangerous-looking Arab. She couldn't say the same for medieval nobles.

Lucy took the time to scan the table. She was about halfway up, near Rissa, and so had a relatively good view of those gathered.

Rissa clicked at her. Lucy slowly went over to refill her goblet of wine. "You're not really drinking the wine, are you?"

"Of course not." Rissa whispered back. "Can you edge closer to the high seat?"

"Why?"

"Sir Bors is looking edgy, and he keeps glancing at Malfoy across the table."

"Okay." Lucy backed off, and spent the next ten minutes trying to creep up the hall. Badan kept looking at her weirdly, and mirrored her movements up the hall, closer to the king. She tried to tell him to sod off, but he just smiled back at her toothily… sans teeth, though. Lucy finally had a view of Bors, who was indeed looking shifty. By his elbow, he had a small box, with, oddly enough, a few pieces of straw sticking out of it. She wondered what was inside.

-0-

The walls.

Walls, walls, round, where? Where was the gone, the gone, above, to the light, but the walls…

Jon wept.

He hurt. He was hurt in his chest and his mind, like clawing, gnawing, hurt, why all the walls, the walls?

So many walls. He loved his wall. It was his wall, his, his, his special one. Maybe there had been something. Light, above, his wall, where… where?

Jon saw the stick on the floor. He picked it up. Why was there a stick? He looked at it. It was sort of light, and smooth, and with a lovely curly bit. The stick felt nice in his hand, so he held it to his chest, and then his head, and it made him feel better. The sound was quieter with the stick.

It was good, to have a stick and a wall, Jon decided.

Jon thought he should stand up. Why? He didn't know. All he knew was… well, what? There had been string. Hours and hours ago. And once the string was gone, the light went away too. Oh, and the ladder. He was sure there had been that. But where was he? Had he been here forever? It was after all his wall. So maybe he'd built it. That was nice. And he had a stick.

Jon thought he saw something. Like a flickering shadow. There was no light, so how could there be shadows? He didn't understand. He walked away from the wall. Where to go? So much dark. He started walking. With the stick, he felt better, so he walked far. Jon felt like he knew the way to somewhere. Where? He couldn't say, but he felt like somebody else was here with him. Someone he knew. Who did he know?

Who was he?


	28. Chapter 27

Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Puzzle

Conny woke slightly later, her face sticky in a pool of blood. She groaned and blinked, trying to see anything, but it was mostly black, save for five tiny lines of light from a grate high in the ceiling. She tried to stand, but her hands and feet were bound. Crumbs. Of course. Malfoy. She really needed to employ a good pixie and a bad pixie to stand on her shoulders and remind her not to be such an idiotic arse. Taunt a death eater, why don't you Conny, in a room full of his mates inside a painting. Fool.

She wiggled and flipped onto her back, using her hand to sit up. Her head was spinning, but she saw, in the dimness, that there was a smear of blood across the floor. So she must have woken up and dragged herself to where she was now. Gods. Conny's mind raced. There was no way she could hop her way out of these tunnels.

"Oh, hang on." She muttered, her voice all cracked. "You're stupid, Conyeri. Dad gives you superboots and you spend more time forgetting them than using them."

She wiggled her toes inside the comfortable, perfectly fitting carom boots and prayed that they were as awesome as she remembered. Slowly, she shuffled into position and rocked backwards, forwards, backwards again, gathering momentum until – hup! – She sprang to her feet, wobbling precariously, but then found her footing.

"Mad skills." She grinned, hopping over to the slivers of light and looking up. Oh, Merlin's tampons, the sky was a darkening blue… which meant that it was sunset, and the feast would be in full swing. She didn't have much time at all. She didn't have a wand, either.

"This would be a great time to accidentally transform into a bedside table." She told herself, half expecting it to work. She only really did that when she was scared at being caught somewhere she shouldn't be, though. Damn. "Hopping it will have to be."

She was about to set off down the tunnel when there was a curse from above. She hopped out of sight of the grate, into the gloom, as a very disgruntled-sounding Crabbe pulled off the grate. He called up above to Macnair- they must be lowering the crate into the tunnels. The hoist and pulley system they'd made creaked and protested; Conny could hear the wood bending and warping under the weight of the crate. It came closer to the grate, and it looked like things were going to go fine for them until, with a sickening snap, the pulley broke.

"Shit!"

The crate crashed to the floor of the tunnel. It was packed with straw, which flew everywhere like sinister confetti. Crabbe peered down, and hastily bolted the grate back into place, cursing like a sailor.

The debris shifted. With what sounded worryingly like a growing hiss, planks and straw moved off the back of something scaly and winged.

Conny wasn't curious enough to wait around to see what was scaly and winged at the same time. She twirled around, took a last look over her shoulder, and started hopping as though her life depended on it.

The monster in the crate, however, wasn't at all concussed by its fall. Conny hopped and hopped, her carom boots helping her balance and sending her launching across the grimy, slippery floor. She heard behind her a scrambling of long, sharp claws in the smashed wood, and the ruffling of wings. The thing seemed to smell for a minute, then unleashed a high, piercing cry, like it was sad, and then, snorted in anger. It began to bound after her, its body slapping against the ground, cawing and snarling.

"Ohcrapohcrap." She huffed, nearly skidding into a storm drain. "Merlin's sterling silver nostril-hair, crap on toast."

She'd said the words out of pure fright, and they made no sense, but, as she narrowly missed a claw to the leg, she was reminded of something. Puzzles. Conny liked puzzles. She'd been thinking about them earlier, and had specifically remembered enjoying the cryptic crossword. One in particular stood out, maybe because the clue had the word silver in it, maybe something else…

Her chain of thought was interrupted as the monster whipped out its long, serpentine tail and lashed her ankle.

Conny fell with a thump to the floor, the wind knocked out of her lungs, and cried out in pain. She knew it was fruitless, but she tried to scramble up… and found her feet unbound.

The tail had snapped the rope binding her ankles.

Conny jumped to her feet, suddenly in her element, and stamped her right foot down hard on the ground, zooming forwards, away from the monster's next strike. She bounced off the wall in a corner of the tunnels, changing direction swiftly, getting a good head start now that she had her feet free. The cryptic crossword clue came swimming to the front of her mind.

_Queen of the Indian silver's young. _Four down. A giant, winged snake from India who laid eggs made of pure silver, and would kill every living thing in its way to get them back.

The Occamy.

Rissa had mentioned that Malfoy had been on holiday in India. She'd seen the silver egg. Malfoy'd given it as a gift to Caradoc, smuggled it in along with its mummy. That must have been what they were talking about. The tunnels were weak… under, she'd bet her last galleon, the place where Caradoc's chair at the feast was. And Caradoc had taken the egg into the feast?

Conny didn't have time to consider the rest, because she crashed headlong into something pink and squishy.

She slammed hard into his chest, sending them both smashing against the wall with a sickening thump-crack-click combination. Conny groaned, trying to move herself up, but her ankle was well and truly gone now. Crap. She pushed the pink thing off from on top of her, only to find that she recognized the mop of auburn hair that adorned it. Jon?

"Jon?" Her mouth echoed her thoughts, but she couldn't follow that through as the Occamy roared just around the corner. It was catching up. "Crap."

She hauled Jon to his feet, wincing as the pain in her ankle multiplied by about seven billion.

"Wall… my… wall… stick." He jabbered, his eyes wild and wide, looking at her but not really seeing. Oh gods, had Jon… had he fallen victim to the fwooper's song? Was he mad?

"Jon!" She slapped him hard across the face. That usually worked on hysterical women in the movies. He shook his head, blinked a couple of times, and then looked at her, bewilderment clear in his features.

"Co…nny?" He croaked, straightening up, helping to take her weight as she balanced on her good leg. "What's going on?"

"No time to explain now. Put my shoes on."

"What?"

"Put my damn shoes on!" She hissed, and Jon obediently removed her carom boots and replaced his own leather boots with them. "You're going to have to carry me, my ankle's bust."

"Carry you where?" He asked. The Occamy snaked its long neck around the corner, its plumage and hackles raised, its huge, gaping jaw wide.

"Away from that."

"Ah." He wasted no time in sprinting off, as Conny hopped on his back. Piggyback, she reached into his pocket for his wand, finding the light, soothing yew there. Since there were no wards down here, she could use as much magic as she liked.

"_Flipendo_!" She cried, blue magic fizzing from the tip of Jon's wand, bouncing off the wall and hitting the Occamy in its side. The creature didn't even notice. Its hide must be thick as nails. Could Caradoc's legend not have involved something simpler? Like, he was afraid of squirrels or something? Why did it always have to be snakes?

"_Stupefy!_" She tried, but she hardly knew the spell. Stunning was beyond even her ability at the moment. It came out as a sort of wonky blob of red light that dribbled onto the floor. "Crap, crap, crap on toast."

"Swearing at eet won't 'elp!" Jon yelled, huffing and puffing, rounding a corner. "Try something specific!"

"Specific?" Conny cried desperately, almost laughing. "Of course, all those spells to kill giant snake-birds we looked at before we got here! How could I have forgotten?"

"Sarcasm eez ze lowest form of wit!"

"Death is even less funny! Run, Jon, run!"

Jon diverted through another tunnel, veering left, sending the Occamy slamming into the wall behind him. It paused and whined, shaking its body before coming after them again. Conny fired a few more curses at it, but her aim was sloppy and her ankle was pounding. The wounds on her face had burst open, sending fresh trickles of blood down her face and obscuring her vision.

Hang on. "Jon! Head towards the great hall!"

"Why?"

"Just do it!" She cried, trying the curse of the bogies on the Occamy, but its scales just reflected the curse back at her. Conny ducked and felt nauseous as Jon changed direction again. She hadn't quite realized how must centripetal force her carom boots exerted on a normal human being.

Jon skidded suddenly to a halt. Conny's gaze snapped back to forwards, and she realized that they were at a dead end.

"Last stand?" Jon asked, taking his wand back and whirling around to face the Occamy.

"Nope." Conny panted, clinging to his back. "How much do you trust my problem-solving skills, Jon?"

"Quite a lot."

"That's good enough." She said as the Occamy leered at them, taking its time in stamping towards them. Its claws were very long and very sharp. Its mouth was full of glinting teeth, its wings huge and feathered, rustling ominously in the darkness.

"Con-"

"Shush." She hushed him, staring at the Occamy. It squeezed through the passage into the small, circular room that was the dead end. It was a little larger and had a higher ceiling than the rest of the tunnels, with piles of rubble and chunks of rock littered on the floor. The ceiling was rough, like it had been blasted.

The Occamy skulked forward, closer, until they could smell the blood on its breath. It smelled them, its nostrils flaring, drinking the smell of their fear in, until…

It smelled its egg above.

The Occamy exploded into action, a shrieking flurry of feathers and fury, launching itself at the ceiling. Only a few inches of limestone separated it from its beloved egg, and there was no stopping its horrible yowling bid for vengeance. With a great swipe of its claws, the Occamy rent the ceiling in two, tearing a lump of rock out. Light cascaded in from above, startling Conny and Jon, and pooled in the dusty chamber. The Occamy gathered itself for its second push, ready to kill anything and everything between it and its egg.

-0-

Bors pushed the egg towards Caradoc, and Lucy immediately knew something was wrong. In the hidden pocket of her dress, her wand began to writhe, and no sooner had she exchanged a significant glance with Rissa than the ground gave an ominous rumble.

"Earthquake?" somebody asked, but Lucy knew that Wales didn't get many earthquakes. She whipped her wand out, as did Rissa, and Tilda in the far corner. Knights' and guards' hands went nervously to the handles of their swords, but nothing seemed to follow. An old, portly gentleman from Dorset even chuckled slightly as called for another round.

Then, a giant snake burst from the floor behind Caradoc's chair.

"Holy Merlin." Slipped out of Lucy's mouth before she could stop it. Bors thrust the box into Caradoc's hand and ran for the exit, the whole hall transfixed by the creature.

Rissa was the first to act. "Flipendo!"

The blue light bounced off the winged snake, breaking a lantern in the corner. So that route was out.

Caradoc opened the box. Inside was a large, perfect, solid silver egg.

The monster screamed and lunged at him, its talons bared, its mouth twisted and wide in an unearthly shriek, fangs slick and red with blood and poison. Althea was the quickest, and pulled a wand out of nowhere, thrusting a shield charm up between her husband and the monster. Lucy was about to run towards the fray when Rissa grabbed her arm and pulled her away.

"Where're we going?" She demanded, watching the monster use its long serpentine tail to slice four soldiers in half.

"To follow Sir Bors." She hissed, grabbing Gil from where he was starting dumfounded at the creature, his hands shaking. "Come on, Gilderoy."

"B-b-bb-but-"

"You said that Malfoy's men are housed just above Caradoc's quarters. It seems strange that they would go out of their way to arrange this, and not to be up to anything there."

"You think the snake-monster is a distraction?" Asked Lucy.

"No. I believe that Malfoy may be attempting to kill two birds with one spell."

"I don't get it."

"Think, Lucy! For once in your life. Malfoy wants to finish off his nemesis, Caradoc, who eloped with his sister. What do men and women who elope often do?"

"Have sex."

"Precisely. And what does sex lead to?"

"Chlamydia?"

"And?"

Realisation dawned on Lucy. "Babies. Caradoc's got a baby."

-0-

"Give me a leg up."

"No way."

"Jon, I swear to Circe I will kick you so hard you'll have to use the girls' bathroom to pee the rest of your life if you don't help me up."

"It's too dangerous."

"So are bumper cars." Conny spat. "Give. Me. A. Leg. Up."

"No."

"Now." She insisted. Jon sighed and squinted up at the hole in the ceiling. While he was looking, a goblet, a plate of burnt pigeon, and a dead body fell through from the battle against the Occamy above. He looked at Conny, then at the hole again, then at the dead, mangled lord of wherever, and cursed.

"Okay." He lifted her up by her good leg and with a spring, used the magic of the carom boots to send her skyrocketing towards the hole. She fell just short, but reached out and grabbed onto the outside, pulling herself up into the great hall. Jon jumped up after her, propelled straight through the hole to land neatly in the middle of the battle.

"Merde." He muttered, diving for cover as the Occamy's tail whooshed inches away from taking his head clean off his neck. "Conny!"

She ducked from the tail and scurried over to him under the table. "Yep?"

"What do we do?"

"Kill it."

"'Ow?"

"If not with magic, then with a really big spiky thing. Like a sword."

"And we're both excellent swordsmen, non?" Jon said, rolling out of the way as a talon slammed down through the table right next to him. "We're dead."

"That sort of negative thinking will hamper your future career."

"Death with 'amper my future career!" He cried, pulling her out of the way as the Occamy dispatched another two guards. "We need to kill eet!"

"Hang on! I'm thinking!" Conny screwed her eyes up. "The Occamy lays silver eggs and protects them ferociously. It values them above all else. It's from hot countries… it flies. I've got it!"

"What?"

"We take its egg and lead it out of the castle."

"Then what?"

"Then… we'll see." Conny said, a plan half-forming in her mind. She lunged out of her hiding place and found Caradoc, surrounded by his elite guards, cowering with the box with the egg inside clutched to his chest. Althea was holding a weak shield up around them, and the soldiers were being picked off one by one.

"Llewellyn!" Conny yelled, catching the young guard's attention.

"It's dangerous! Get ye out, t'safety!"

"Llewellyn, you can't hurt it with your sword! Please, listen to me!"

Caradoc turned his head to face her, the shouting between them having caught his attention. "What should we do?"

Surprised by the fear in his voice, Conny paused. "Caradoc, you need to follow me, out of the castle. I have an idea to kill it!"

He nodded, clutching the box, Althea's shield charm wavering. "Meet you in the forecourt!"

She nodded, and she and Jon pelted out of the great hall, zigzagging through the halls until they emerged into the forecourt. Out of a separate door, Caradoc and Althea came running, surrounded by their guards, the rampaging Occamy hot on their heels, fruitlessly trying to flap its stunted wings. Conny and Jon joined Caradoc and Althea panting and sweating.

"What now?" Caradoc asked, his hands shaking. Conny looked at the fountain, a statue of the king, now all frozen up, of course. It was the very middle of winter…

"I know. We have to lead him across the moat."

"The moat's frozen."

"Yes, but the Occamy is about eight times our weight. If it stands in the weakest ice in the middle, it'll fall in. the freezing water will gets into its wings and drag it down. It's a tropical creature."

"You're serious?"

"As a History of Magic essay." Conny winked. Confusion gripped Caradoc's tired features, but he said no more, nodding. He yelled at his men, who broke into a run. The group of humans sprinted across the forecourt, through a gate, and out to the drawbridge. It was up. Good.

"Come on!" Caradoc called, as he reached the moat.

"We'll go first. We're lightest." Conny and Jon stepped onto the ice. Not a sound. Jon supported Conny as she limped to the other side, wincing as her ankle turned a worrying purple. "Okay! Come over!"

Caradoc and Althea were next, nervous as the Occamy started catching up, flinging a solider who'd tried to slash at its neck away. They reached the other side quickly. "Come, men! Cross the moat!"

His guards didn't need telling twice. They scrambled onto the ice, which groaned and cracked under their weight. They couldn't go all at once; they'd be too heavy. Still, they were frightened, and they crossed the ice as quickly as possible, the Occamy reaching the bank.

"Now! We're all across!" Caradoc held up the egg, uncovered, having sensed that the Occamy was after it.

Except not all of the soldiers had managed to get off the ice yet.

"Llewellyn!" Conny cried, reaching out, but he'd fallen over. The Occamy, incensed, leapt onto the sheet of frozen water, sending cracks spiraling across it. Llewellyn's eyes widened and he made a small, sad noise, before, with a huge splintering sound, he disappeared into twenty feet of freezing water. The Occamy flailed and tried to latch a talon onto the sheet of ice, but it broke off. Its wings, heavy with icy water, dragged it down the to bottom of the moat.

"Llewellyn!" She said again, not quite believing it. He would resurface. He had to.

"I'm sorry, lass." The captain of the guard put his hand on her shoulder. "Chainmail's heavy, an' he canna swim."

"No!" She bawled, feeling tears in her eyes. He'd only been trying to help… he'd asked her to be his girlfriend… he'd been the only nice person she'd found in this stupid world!

"This is all your fault!" She screamed at Caradoc, who stood back, shocked. "You had to go and run away from life in a painting! You stupid, selfish man!"

"Hang on a minute." He protested, glancing around. "I'm not sure what you're talking about…"

"Don't lie! You created this painting, you enchanted this phase! You made all these people come into existence! You created life and death! And you made yourself the lord over it all! Just like He Who Must Not Be Named!"

"I am not like him!" Caradoc retorted, his nostrils flared. "I fought against him in the war. I was in the Order. I know better than you just what evil is capable of."

"Then why could you do this?"

"We… we had to get away. The war never really ended, for us. Because Lucius never… he never forgave me." Althea said quietly, sadness brimming in her eyes. Conny's heart thumped in her chest. She shouldn't have shouted. She'd just been so angry that Llewellyn had been created to die…

A high, cruel chuckle reverberated around them. From the other side of the bank, Lucius Malfoy watched their exchange, his face grim.

"How… touching." He sneered, his wand raised. "Quite the little ruse, Caradoc. Not quite good enough, though. As predicted, no mudblood could outwit me."

Caradoc growled at him, his wand out, ready to duel.

"Take your taint back to your scumbag lord, Malfoy." He spat. "Oh, wait… Wasn't he defeated? I don't quite remember."

"You dare speak of him!" Malfoy asked. "Shut your filthy mouth, Dearborn. And take your grubby hands off my sister."

"You are not my brother, Lucius." Althea said boldly. "I will never come back."

"You have been tainted by him! He had clouded your vision and weakened your magic! Come back, and you can remember what real power is! The power our pure blood gives us!"

"You're a fool, Lucius. I'm not coming back."

"If you will not come voluntarily, I will take you back myself!"

"Try it, toff." Caradoc challenged, his wand held high. "I don't know who you are, but I need your help."

"What?"

He gestured to Althea. She whispered to Conny and Jon. "The nursery. We have a baby. Malfoy can't have him. Help him?"

Conny and Jon nodded. Jon scooped Conny up and dug his heels into the snow, ready to send them flying back inside the castle.

Malfoy saw. Malfoy knew. His eyes widened, and he snarled.

"I'll race you, Dearborn. If I win, I'll kill your child."

It's a trap, Conny thought dimly. Malfoy's men are already there. They'll have killed him already… there's something waiting… a trap…

-0-

Lucy skidded around a corner, nearly dislodging an ancient vase on its pedestal. Gil followed behind her, with Rissa sort of skipping, holding up the many layers of skirts that made up her costume. It would have been funny if they hadn't been busy trying to stop a baby being killed.

"Left here." Gil panted, his bulk hindering him in this instance, compared to the two relatively fit girls. They went up a small staircase, and emerged onto one of the lavishly decorated corridors of the Lord of the Castle's quarters. They were oddly empty, because the commotion in the great hall must have been audible from everywhere, and the guards who'd been hanging around in their droves had left. They passed paintings that they recognized… well, Lucy recognized the signature on them, having slept in the bedroom at the Inbetween House all Easter right next to it. Caradoc had painted these. They were beautiful; poetic… he was a really good painter. They didn't move, because that would be conspicuous, but there was still an unearthly beauty to them. Lucy wondered if any of them led to other worlds, other places where Caradoc and Althea could hide.

A world inside a painting, inside the world inside a painting. Lucy couldn't quite wrap her head around that one.

"Wait!" Gil grabbed the back of her dress, yanking Lucy behind a statue. "There."

They peered around the corner, seeing the two guards in front of Caradoc's personal quarters. Crap. They must be Malfoy's men.

"Bors must have already gone in. He could be killing that baby right this second!" Lucy hissed.

"I think Bors is under the Imperius Curse." Rissa whispered to them both. "It is… a specialty of the Death Eaters'."

"Is there anything we can do to snap him out of it?" Lucy asked. "You know, appeal to his better nature?"

"In my experience, a slap around the face can work." Rissa grinned, impishness ablaze in her usually glassy grey eyes. Lucy'd often thought that Rissa's family, the Mothleys, looked a lot like the Malfoy family- they were different lines of roughly the same origins, though, as the Malfoys had come over from Russia a few hundred years before a Mothley set foot in Folkestone. They both came from the House of Karov, after all. It was interesting, though, that when that spark was in Rissa's eyes, when a smile graced her pretty face; she looked nothing like the Malfoys. Maybe those few hundred extra years in Russia did them good.

"What about the guards? They've got swords _and_ wands, we don't stand a chance."

"We've got the element of surprise. And Lucy won the dueling competition last year."

"Because a very sudden tickling charm is _so_ going to work." Lucy rolled her eyes. "The longer we sit here, the higher chance the baby dies. I say we try a full body-bind."

"Petrificus Totalus? That's a hard spell." Gil said, worried, since he wasn't that good at spells.

"I'll give it a go. Riss, you get one, I'll get the other? And Gil, you get ready to take their wands."

"Okay."

They leaned around the corner, seeing the guards still standing there. "Oh three. One… two… thr-"

"HWWAAAARRGHHH!"

The ceiling next to the guards exploded. They jumped about a foot in the air, fumbling for their wands, but Lucy and Rissa took this as their cue to strike, and simultaneously yelled "_Petrificus Totalus!_"

The two guards, mid-gesture, froze, their skin shuddering, deathly pallor coming over their faces. They stood, stock still as statues, and then fell over, clattering on the floor.

Coughing, Conny and Jon pulled themselves out of the rubble. "Before that happens again, Jon, I'm going to teach you how to properly use those things."

"Eet's not my fault! 'Ow was I to know zey'd go zat far?"

"Tch." Conny coughed, dislodging plaster and chips of stone from her nose. "Thanks, by the way, Luce."

"Don't mention it." Lucy said, slightly shell-shocked, and gave Rissa a quick high-five. "Bors is already in there. We think he's imperius'd."

"Aw, crap. Just when things were starting to look easy." Conny said. "I don't have my wand."

"Or half of your blood, from the look of those cuts." Gil said, wincing. "Are you all right?"

"Peachy. C'mon, we need to go."

"Stand at the back, Conny. You said it yourself, you do not have a wand." Rissa advised.

"Nonsense. Someone lend me theirs." She demanded, sticking her hand out. Nobody obliged. "Oh, come on. Like any of you can curse better than me."

"If we wanted to turn Bors's cufflinks into threadworms, we'd give you our wands. My family have the criminal empire, I get to do the cursing."

Conny sighed. "Have it your way. Let's go."

She obediently but somewhat begrudgingly stepped into formation behind Gil and Jon, Lucy heading up the charge with Rissa.

"Into the valley of death rode the six hundred…" she muttered. "Malfoy'll be here soon. He and Caradoc are posturing."

Lucy reached out for the doorknob. Conny superstitiously crossed herself. It turned slowly, and the door creaked open to a dark, still, room. They shuffled over the periphery, wands outstretched, Conny having stooped down to take the wands of the two petrified death eaters from their clenched hands.

"I hate when things are too quiet." Gil whispered, "It always feels like something's about to jump out at you."

"That is the number one worst thing to say in a dark, eerie room, Gilderoy." Rissa said, a tremor in her voice. It seemed they'd found her bête noire.

"Go past the pile of presents… there's another door. That must lead to the nursery."

They inched forwards, the tip of Lucy's wand glowing with lumos and casting blue shadows over the walls. Rissa was clutching Lucy's other hand as though her life depended on it, obviously scared to death. They opened the other door, and behind it stood Bors, still as the petrified guards, a bundle of cloth in the crook of his elbow, his other hand holding a knife a hair's breadth above the baby's throat. It was asleep.

Bors' wide, pale eyes looked up at them. His jaw was clenched, his hands trembling.

"Please, get away!" He choked, looking at the baby. "I cannot stop myself. I am under some sorcery! My limbs move without my mind's volition."

"It's okay, Sir Bors." Gil stepped forward, bowing. "Fight it! Your noble mind is stronger than any sorcery!"

"We're not in a Dungeons and Dragons roleplay, Gil." Lucy rolled her eyes, stepping closer. Bors violently shuddered, his knife slowly descending, the baby yawning and cooing in his warm grasp.

"Please." He begged, a small dribble of blood escaping out of the corner of his mouth. "It hurts so."

Lucy took another step forwards. "Hold on, Borsie. You've got a baby boy in your arms. If you killed him, God'll be pretty pissed off at you."

"This Sorcery is work of the devil!" Bors cried, wincing, the knife juddering in his hands.

"We'll run with that. Cast out the devil, and embrace God! Fight the compulsion, hand me the baby."

"I…" Bors cast his eyes down. "I cannot. I want to, but I cannot!"

Jon cleared his throat, pointed his wand at the knife, and decided to take matters into his own hands. "Wingardium Leviosa!"

The knife wobbled in Bors' grip, and shocked, he let go of it. Jon shakily levitated the knife up, up, out of his reach.

"There we go. Gimme the baby, Borsie." Lucy stood in front of him, nervous, her hands outstretched. "C'mon. There's a good boy."

Bors extended the bundle of blankets, snarling, hacking up a globule of dark, sticky blood. Oh gods, Conny thought, he's killing himself. Such a noble knight, to physically resist the imperius curse, was actually tearing him apart from the inside.

Lucy took the baby, quickly stepping back from Bors. He clutched at his chest, convulsing, the whites of his eyes shining out in the gloom. He collapsed to his knees, retching, throwing up dark spots of blood onto the carpet. Conny turned away. She couldn't watch a man die. Gil, Rissa and Jon turned with her, their faces aghast, but Lucy didn't turn. She watched Bors until his last, wretched breath, clutching the baby in her arms.

The knife Jon had been levitating fell to the floor by his side, sticking out of the floor, sickeningly clean compared to the bloodied carpet. The hard thunk it made masked another noise, the noise of Lucius Malfoy bursting through the door, his hair messed up and his wand outstretched, murder in his eyes. He saw Conny and faltered.

"The problem with children these days is that they _will not die_." He snapped. "I may have lost Dearborn and Althea, but I will erase their halfblooded child from this world."

"Wouldn't want to taint that famously pure Malfoy bloodline, ey, Lucius?" Lucy bluffed, cradling the baby protectively.

"You're not one to boast about bloodlines. Half-caste, big-mouthed, stealing other peoples' possessions- no doubting that you're the infamous Lucy Ra."

"Congratulations. You obviously got the brains." Lucy replied icily. "Face it, Malfoy. You've lost. Caradoc's gone, along with your sister. And we're all standing between you and their kid."

"Standing between me and him? Don't flatter yourselves. You're just five children."

There was a loud thud, and Malfoy's face drooped for a brief moment, before he fell to the floor, out cold. Behind him, Tilda stood with a saucepan, looking very pleased with herself.

"Six children." She corrected, grinning lopsidedly. "That was more cathartic than I had imagined."

"Tilda!" Conny cried, jumping over to give her a hug. "Where've you been?"

"I had a hunch." She shrugged. "Althea and Caradoc are gone. They disappeared into a painting… and then I burned it."

"You WHAT?"

"They're safe now."

Conny looked to the baby and back. "Are you serious? They left their son behind!"

"They did? Shame."

"Tilda! This isn't like leaving your card behind the bar! It's a baby! And they can't come back now!"

"They're safe."

"You said that." Gil put in, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. The buzzing in their ears was getting insistent now, grating, and unbearable. As the adrenaline of the fight and flight wore off, they began to wince in pain.

"We've got to get out of here. Baby or no baby."

"We take the baby?"

"I… I suppose, yeah." Conny looked at him. He had Caradoc's nose.

"Okay. Cool, let's go. I'm going to go mad if this bloody buzzing continues any longer." Lucy said, putting her wand away.

"So?" They all turned to Conny.

"What?"

"So, let's get out."

"Er- come again?" Conny asked.

"How do we get out?"

Conny made a face. "Crap."

"Crap is not the correct answer." Gil said nervously, eyeing Malfoy's prone body.

"Um, I've a confession to make."

"Please tell me it's that you keep a pair of Az's pants in your bedside table or something." Lucy crossed her fingers.

"Um, no. It's that I sort of… didn't really think about getting back out again."

There was deathly silence.

"WHAT!" Lucy shrieked, waking the baby, who proceeded to cry, adding to the growing cacophony. "We spent months preparing! We made potions and costumes and learned spells and you even scratched stuff onto some metal things with a compass! But you didn't think about _getting us out_?"

"Not really, no."

"Conny, you are the stupidest clever person I know." Lucy whined, rocking the baby. "Shut up, baby, go back to sleep. Auntie Conny's just being a prat."

"And Auntie Lucy isn't helping." Gil reminded her. "Let's think about this. Malfoy must have been prepared to go back."

"'E told Althea 'e was going to bring her back with 'im." Jon pitched in helpfully. "So 'e must 'ave some way of escape."

"Search him, then." Gil suggested.

Lucy handed the baby over to Rissa, who took it, looking startled. She rolled up her sleeves. "Stand aside, people. I'm in my element."

Lucy knelt down and, careful not to touch him, lightly ran her fingers over the contours of his coat and trousers. She seemed to decide on the right side of his ribs, because she then went to grab the knife from beside Bors. She deftly cut the fabric, revealing a chock-full secret pocket of his coat.

"Hey, Conny, here's your wand." She handed it over. Conny felt much more secure with her wand in her possession, and the maddening song seemed to fade slightly. "Hmm… what am I looking for?"

"Picture, photograph, something like that." Conny said, thinking. "Any creative medium the we brought with us that embodies a scene would theoretically have a spatial link back to the real world."

"So I'm looking for a clay model of a dining room?"

"No. Probably a photograph."

Lucy rummaged through the pocket, but found nothing. She continued to completely remove everything hidden or kept on Malfoy's body, while around her, the rest of them shifted impatiently, rolling their shoulders or tap-tap-tapping their feet on the floor. The baby restlessly squirmed in Rissa's grip, so she handed it to Conny, who wasn't much better. She pawned it off to Jon, who, curiously, seemed to calm the baby down.

"I really can't find anything on him." Lucy shrugged. "Maybe we should check upstairs, where his stuff is."

They agreed, and quickly ran up to the guard tower. The whole castle seemed disturbingly deserted, blurry, almost… quiet, but threatening. Shadows reared in every lull of light, around each corner seemed a hovering presence. It was far too isolated, so strange… people flittered in and out of the edges of their vision, ghosts, never daring to go too close, but always watching… waiting. They felt hungry.

Conny, thoroughly spooked, shivered. "Hurry up."

"I'm going! Merlin, you're more impatient than Corfax before a feast." Lucy looked through their bags, through the husks of crates that were emptied.

"Hey, look." Gil pointed to the floor. "Bloody footprints. Malfoy's men were at the feast, or around there… but, the footprints come in the door and then just end."

They followed his chain of thought. "So all his men had a way out of here. There must be something!"

They all started rummaging about, the buzzing harder, more insistent discordant, like an out of tune violin screeching, like being wrung tightly out. They tore pillows apart, ransacked packs, even prized floorboards up.

"Nothing. Sodding nothing." Gil croaked, a muscle in his eye twitching. "We're going to die."

"Don't talk like that." Conny tried, but her voice came out quiet as the din rose to a huge, discordant symphony, sharps and flats resolving into a grating, haunting melody, prickling at the edges of their consciousness, the ghosts gathering, swaying to and fro, hungry-eyed specters.

"I know!" Rissa shouted suddenly, her voice a distorted wail. They grabbed each others' hands and Rissa pointed to the baby. Jon, confused, looked at him. Rissa opened the blankets, and surely enough, a small square of parchment floated out. Conny snatched it in mid-air, her vision blurring, focus screaming inwards and outwards, and held it up to the light. On it was, in crude ink, a door. A drawing of a door. That was it.

That was good enough.

"Grab… on!" She yelled. There was barely enough paper for everyone to hold it by their forefinger and thumb, but they managed it. Think, Conny. The activation spell. Remember the… remember…

So many ghosts.

Hundreds. In the room. Watching. Waiting. It was maddening. They were getting closer, their milky eyes looking at her, reaching out, and singing. They sang so prettily… such a lovely voice, for a ghost…

Lucy slapped her around the face.

"What the hell!" She yelled automatically, realizing suddenly that she had been teetering over. Oh gods. Focus, Conny. Forget the ghosts. The ghosts… who sang so loud…

"_PERCLAUSTA_!"

The ghosts exploded with hate. The edges of the room began to fade within their whiteness, ashes and smoke, wisps of being. The colours ran, brown smudging over the white, white walls. Conny was hurtled upwards, physically pulled like a puppet on strings. They could be going anywhere. She felt the fwooper's song take one, last, desperate dig into her brain, like the clash of a hundred thousand cymbals, the pounding of the bass drum, and then it vanished, leaving blissful quiet.


	29. Chapter 28

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Our Safe Places

They landed in darkness.

Jon was first up, still cradling the baby, which was giggling happily as though that had all been so much fun. Lucy helped Rissa up and they dusted off, looking around. They daren't use any magic in case they weren't at school.

"Hang on." Conny felt the wall. There was a door, with an old-fashioned brass knob, like the one in the picture. "This is the door. We're back."

"Back where, though?" Gil mused. "Ehya! Oh, wait. It's just a coat."

"A coat?"

"Yep. It's dim, but there are others. Hey, they're all multicoloured… oh, wait. Conny, they're aprons. Aprons covered in paint."

"Caradoc's an artist, it makes sense."

Lucy cleared her throat. "Open the door?"

"There could be anyth-"

Lucy twisted the knob and light flooded into the tiny storage cupboard. They blinked and stepped out onto familiar stone floors.

"Well, call me a horklump." Lucy chuckled, wearily eyeing the numerous easels, half-finished canvases and dirty jam-jars full of paintbrushes. "It's the art room."

"No way." Gil croaked. "On the fifth floor?"

"Yep. Where the art club meets." Said Lucy, kicking a scrunched-up bit of parchment across the floor. "We're in Hogwarts. Caradoc's safe place is Hogwarts."

The sound of pointy boots on the floor startled them all as Albus Dumbledore cleared his throat. They hadn't noticed him, and everyone but Jon, who was wary of the baby, jumped out of their skins. They could have sworn he hadn't been there a few seconds ago.

"Indeed it was." Dumbledore mused, stroking his beard as he examined a canvas upon which was painted a rather poor rabbit. "Mister Dearborn devoted his life to this room."

They all stood in silence, awkward, waiting for Dumbledore to expel them.

"How is the boy, Monsieur Lucwitt?"

Jon blushed scarlet, clutching the baby. "Emm…. 'E's… okay, I think."

"Ah, excellent. I believe that there's a man who'd very much like to take care of him, seeing as how he's just been released from prison."

"You mean, Maenalus?" Conny blurted.

"Yes, dear Maenalus. I have only met the man once, and when he was a young boy at that… It was not a nice meeting. Some wizards treat a squib worse than a muggle."

"The Malfoys." Rissa said sharply, unsure if Dumbledore was insulting her family or not.

"It is a shame that the good eggs of that family will never be known. Dear Maenalus, who risked his life to help his dear sister. Althea was a beautiful and talented young woman, who disagreed with her upbringing. A little too loudly for her family, I fear."

"If you mean she's had to run away forever, then yes." Lucy snapped, her arms crossed. "You knew? And you didn't do anything?"

Dumbledore held up his hands. "It was not my place. Was it not, Matilda?"

Tilda stiffened, not catching anyone's eye. Dumbledore smiled ever so slightly and raised his eyebrows, as if conveying a silent message only Tilda understood.

"But, sir," Conny began, "I don't understand. What will happen to Caradoc and Althea now?"

"They will be safe, Miss DeHayersae."

"And what about the people in that painting? Those who died? They were real!"

Dumbledore's face changed, taking on a serious cast for a moment, as though lost in thought. He lanced his long, gnarled fingers together and took a few paces, as if moving to admire a triptych of the great hall in the autumn by the far wall.

"What is real and what we believe to be real are not the same things, Miss DeHayersae."

"The baby's real. And he came from that world. We could have taken people out of it! We could… we could have made people from nothing!"

"The child belongs to our world. You must realize that. Men like Llewellyn would simply… fade. Like ghosts."

Conny froze and stared. How… how could he know? She was about to ask when Dumbledore checked a pocketwatch and gasped loudly, causing them all to jump again.

"It's already that late! My, I must change into my evening robes. I would advise you all to do the same, lest you miss the lovely beef casserole I'm told is being served."

"What? What feast?" Gil asked before realizing. "The end of term feast? We've been away that long?"

"Time is a tricky thing, Mister Lockhart." Dumbledore said sagely. "Now, might I have the child? I'd like him to meet his Uncle Maenalus as soon as possible."

Jon dubiously handed the bundle of blankets over to Dumbledore, who chuckled again. "It seems I've been doing a great deal of baby brokering of late. Perhaps I was a stork in a past life?"

Again, silence pervaded, nobody quite understanding what he meant. Dumbledore was about to leave when Conny stopped him.

"A name." Conny said, "He needs a name."

Startled, Dumbledore inclined his head. "That he does. Do you know what his parents named him?"

"No." They all shook their heads.

"Then, what is his name?"

Conny's mind flashed to the paint-covered aprons. "Joseph."

"Joseph?" Dumbledore followed her gaze to the cupboard, and smiled, clapping his hands together as if it was the most genial idea. "Ah! He certainly looks like a Joseph to me. What a good choice."

The baby- Joseph – gurgled happily and grabbed a handful of Dumbledore's magnificent beard, yanking on it hard. For a second, the headmaster's face contorted in pain, but he recovered quickly.

"Have a good summer, all of you." He said, "And I would perhaps avoid galleries for a while."

Conny and Jon looked at each other guiltily. "Yes, Professor."

With that, and one last shriek of delight from Joseph, who'd just discovered the decoration on Dumbledore's robes, he was gone.

-0-

Conny felt very odd in her uniform, which felt very comfortable compared to what she'd been wearing. Lucy had helpfully swabbed her wounds up, but one was going to need some medical attention at some point. Her ankle was broken, but not too badly. Goodness knows how she'd managed on it, but Professor Atremidus, who they visited on their way down to the feast, fixed it up in a jiffy. She knew better than to ask questions, and threw in a wound-closing charm for free, but gave Conny and very charring look.

"Lucelia, could you go up to your tower and get Conyeri another shirt? I'm afraid there's blood on the collar of this one." She asked.

"Sure. Be right back." Lucy popped out. Conny was left with Atremidus, who looked severe.

"Conyeri," She began, "I need you to do something for me."

"What?"

"I have seen many patients in my time, and worked with many healers. One in particular came to me… perhaps five years ago. He wondered if I could prescribe something to calm his daughter down, for she was wild and destructive."

"Rissa Mothley." Conny breathed, wincing as her ribs protested at her leaning forwards. "You prescribed the draught of peace to Rissa Mothley."

"If I'd had known what Hr. Mothley actually wanted to do… I would have never told him to use it. But Conyeri, the point is this. Lucelia, through what wiles she possesses, has taken Clarissa off the draught of peace."

"I know."

"I know that you know. Which is why I need you to help me. Now, Clarissa may seem… free, uninhibited, more fun, more relaxed, better company. But the more Lucelia is allowed to influence her, the more they are together… I fear they will return to their childhood state."

"What was so bad about that? I know they were wild and all, but they had fun."

Atremidus shook her head. "Lucelia and Clarissa… they did something terrible. They were young, it was never mentioned again, but… if Clarissa is allowed to stay off the draught of peace, she will do something similar."

"What was it?"

"It's not my business to say. But I want you to please look out for Clarissa. It has been a long time since she's had so many emotions. If… If it comes to it, Conyeri, and you will know when it does, I want you to administer this."

Atremidus handed her a vial, stoppered with a beautifully tooled copper dragon. Conny immediately knew by its design that it was the sister of Rissa's silver snake vial, which she kept her draught of peace in. "What's in it?"

"Something to help."

Conny eyes Atremidus carefully, realizing that she was deliberately being vague. She shrugged and carefully placed the vial in one of the pockets inside her robes. "Okay."

"Thank you." Atremidus relaxed back in her chair. A few seconds later, Lucy appeared, not carrying a shirt.

"You can just vanish the blood. Conny doesn't need a new shirt- you wanted me out of the way. Why?"

Conny pinked, thinking Atremidus would freeze up, but needn't have worried. "Conyeri wanted to talk to me about something personal."

"Personal? What's so personal you can't talk to me about it?" She demanded.

"Erm…" Conny flailed. "Um…"

"Periods, Lucelia." Atremidus deadpanned. "And I suppose if you must know, you must. Conyeri was trying to solicit an anti-menstruation charm for you from me."

Lucy shut up, and went bright pink. "B- but… I haven't started yet."

"You will soon. Now, where did I put it… ah, here." Atremidus rummaged in one of her drawers and pulled out a small bracelet. It was plain, though made of silver, and would, Conny suspected, tastefully go with anything.

Lucy accepted it. "Erm… thanks."

"It isn't a problem. When you start, Conyeri will explain everything to you."

"I'm not a child! I know… how these things work. Ish."

"Ish. Exactly." Atremidus lazily vanished the spots of blood on Conny's collar. "Now, get to the feast. I hear the stroganoff is to die for."

"Thanks, Professor." They stood up. "Good luck in proper retirement."

Atremidus chuckled. "I'll need it. Good luck to you too, girls."

They left the old Professor's office and walked in silence down to the Great Hall, where the feast was just beginning. When they walked in, heads turned to look at them, and whispers broke out all over the hall. They sat down next to Jon, across from Luke and Ally, who were teary-eyed.

"Hullo, you two." Luke greeted them. "I'm glad you're okay for the feast. Summer Dragon pox is so rare… and to spread to so many people in your year, too."

"How're you feeling?" Ally asked maternally.

"Er- okay, thanks. Madam Pomfrey healed us great."

"I heard it was Atremidus' help that got you recovered so quickly. She's such a legend." Luke said.

"How come you two are all crying and stuff?" Lucy asked, looking around impatiently for food, having cooked pigeons for a massive feast she'd not got to eat.

"Because… it's all over." Ally sniffed. "Hogwarts, it's done."

"Done?" Conny realized that Luke and Ally were about to end their seventh years. "Oh, wow. Where do you want to go?"

"Well, if I get the grades- got to wait until August for the N.E.W.T. results and all- the Wizarding University of London offered me a place to read Defensive Magic." Luke said proudly, puffing up his chest. Conny couldn't remember whether it was Cousin Lottie or Cousin Florie who went to the WUL.

"What about you, Ally?" Lucy asked.

"I've got an internship at the Department of Magical Transport." She beamed. "I beat off half the world for it, it seems. It's an amazing thing to get just out of school."

It seemed like everyone was set for their future. Conny felt a twinge. "I'll miss you, Luke, Ally."

"Aw." The burst out into tears again, drawing stares, though many other seventh-years were also a bit weepy. "We'll miss you too. Good luck, okay? Please, be good."

"We will." Lucy rolled her eyes, and Dumbledore appeared suddenly from somewhere, striding towards the lectern. "Shh."

He cleared his throat, and the whole hall fell silent at once.

"Hogwarts. For seven years, you study here, live here, and love here. It is a journey that, unfortunately, must come to an end. Today, we say goodbye to our seventh-years, and wish them luck in their chosen careers."

Luke started sobbing comically and blew his nose on Ally's robes. "I don't wanna leave!" he hiccoughed.

"However, their efforts, and the efforts of every one of you in the race for the House Cup, have not gone unnoticed. Professor McGonagall has counted up the points- ah, thank you, Minerva – and the totals stand thus."

Lucy crossed her fingers. "We saved a baby and killed a giant bird-snake. That's got to be worth points, right?"

"Shut up."

"In last place, with three hundred and seven points, is Hufflepuff House."

This was not unexpected, and the Hufflepuffs took it in their stride. Corfax did look a bit glum, though.

"In third place, with three hundred and forty-four points, is Gryffindor House."

The table in red, though disappointed, still whooped and cheered, congratulating themselves on a good try. Conny thought that maybe because Ravenclaw had won the quidditch, that might have cancelled out all the points she'd lost by attacking Ralphus and that Lucy had lost for pissing off Snape…

"In second place, with three hundred and ninety two points, is Slytherin House. Which means, with an impressive four hundred points dead, the winners of the House Cup are Ravenclaw House!"

Luke actually jumped forty feet in the air and roared.

"YEEEEESSSSSSS!" He fist-pumped, shouting and screaming. "Go Ravenclaw!"

Conny and Lucy high-fived, pleased with themselves. Anyone who'd ever been pissed off at them for losing points forgot to care, and even Polly and Anna were dancing in their seats and spared a smile for Conny.

"We won, Luce." She grinned. "We won."

"It's not that important, is it?"

"It is. It's the cup."

"But… it doesn't matter in the long run. What we did, that's what matters." Lucy insisted.

"Maybe. But the cup is really shiny." She joked and Luke went up to receive the cup from Dumbledore. Professor Flitwick's fez fell off, he was clapping so fervently.

Then the food appeared.

Lucy forgot everything and discovered that the beef stroganoff was, as advertised, excellent.

-0-

The carriage was stuffed, and sweltering in the summer heat. Bach was curled up in the luggage rack, snoozing. Conny and Lucy still felt full from the feast the night before, and were surrounded by those who'd gone to Wales with them. The mood was strange, happy, but sort of unsure and very tired.

Gil had his book of Arthurian Legends out.

"Seriously, Gil, put that away. I'm going to kill the next person who mentions any of what happened." Lucy groaned, stretching, having been intermittently napping on Conny and Jon's laps.

"Hang on." He flipped a few pages, his brow furrowed. "Go away, I'm reading."

"Tch." Lucy sighed. "Hey, how were everyones' grades?"

A relieved-looking Professor Flitwick had given them their internal exam grade sheet hastily that morning.

"You don't want to know mine." Conny said quietly, but Lucy grabbed her piece of paper anyway.

"What the hell! All Os. Every single subject."

"Only because I'm not taking Arithmancy any more." Conny huffed, snatching it back. "I bet yours were good, too."

"Tch, mine were fine. Jon?"

"Comme si, comme sa." He shrugged, flashing a mixture of Os, Es, and a couple of As. "'Ave you see ze paper attached to ze back?"

"Eh? Where."

"Zere."

Conny flipped her results over and saw a form. "Provisional choices for third-year electives. I was wondering when we'd get these."

"What're you gunna take, Con?" Lucy asked, looking at the list.

"Definitely not Care of Magical Creatures. Not if I have to even read the word 'Occamy' again." She shuddered. "I think I'll keep Arithmancy, I don't mind it. And I'm definitely taking Study of Ancient Runes. You?"

"I was thinking of Care of Magical Creatures." Lucy said, affronted. "Come on! It's a way different subject to the usual classroomy stuff. And you get to do cool stuff, like feed nifflers and set fire to salamanders. Plus Kettleburn's a nutter. It'll be a blast! Come do it with me? Please?"

"I don't know… I won't have any free periods if I do another one."

"But you have to an extra elective anyway, since you don't do Astronomy."

"I don't do Astronomy so I can do extra Transfig, Luce." Conny explained. "I'll tell you what. I'll drop Arithmancy and do Care of Magical Creatures with you."

"Yes!" Lucy gave her a thumbs-up. "But I'm not doing runes."

"You don't have much choice, then. It's either Divination with Trelawney, who's a weirdo, or Muggle Studies with Quirrell." Conny pointed out. "At least in runes, you'll be able to copy my work."

"Ah! Didn't think of it that way. Okay, so we'll both do Creatures and Runes. You up for that, Jon?" Lucy asked.

"I'll do Care of Magical Creatures," he agreed, "But I want to do Divination."

"You serious?"

"Oui."

"Seriously serious? It's the next two years of your life you'll spend in that god-awful tower. You can smell the incense from the Commons." Lucy shuddered.

"I don't want to do Runes. I already 'ave trouble with English, I don't need to 'ave another language to learn."

"It's only script!"

"Same thing. Non, I 'ave made my choice."

"Tch." Lucy huffed. "What about you Tilda? Divination, I'm guessing?"

"How well you know me." Tilda raised an eyebrow. "And Runes, I think."

"Riss?"

"I am… not sure?" She shrugged, managing to make it look elegant. "I would have to consult my brother, and our parents."

"Really? Really, Riss? Just pick on a whim. C'mon." Lucy tried, giving her a wink. Rissa hesitated, and then decided that perhaps Lucy was right.

"Okay. Well, I will do… Care of Magical Creatures and Divination, like Jonmarc."

Jon smiled at her, and Rissa smiled back. Conny didn't miss that.

"Gil?"

"Shut up, I'm reading."

They all sighed.

The group chatted about the holidays, what they were going to do, what art galleries they were not going to visit, and the morning turned into the afternoon as London got closer. Soon, the train was full of seventh-years playing their last pranks, one of which involved a large can of eternally expanding foam thrown into their compartment. While this was amusing for a few minutes, they spent a very wet half-hour scrambling around in the foam looking for the can so they could throw it out of the window. Luke came in, still crying like a baby, to apologise and helpfully scoured the carriage free of foam.

"We're slowing down." Tilda observed, and they had indeed nearly reached platform nine and three quarters. Conn grabbed a yowling Bach from the luggage rack and grabbed her elective form and exam marks, ready to disembark. As soon as the huge, crimson Hogwarts Express had ground to a halt, she squeezed into the hallway waiting for the doors to open. On the platform, the red-uniformed porters were already emptying the luggage compartment, and Conny spotted her trunk in the middle of a neat pile and with Jon's help extricated it.

She was about to search out her dad, who would be waiting for her on the platform, when a familiar voice called her name.

"Conny!" Az Spooks came jogging over, his trunk skidding behind him. "Conny, I tried to visit you, I really did, but Madam Pomfrey said the dragon pox was really contagious… are you okay?"

"Yes, Az." She smiled, feeling guilty for the lie. "I'm okay. It must have been the project I was working on with the others- I don't know how we got it, but we all did. It's just lucky that Professor Atremidus is such a good healer, else I'd have those horrible pockmark scars."

"You don't." He assured her, reaching for her hand. Conny took it shyly, feeling eyes around the platform on them. "You're not contagious any more, right?"

"Not at all." She grinned. Az's flyaway blonde hair tickled her forehead, he was so close, and she felt butterflies dancing in her stomach.

"I'll owl you. You've got to come visit in the holiday."

"I don't know how my parents would feel about that." Conny said, worried.

"Well, maybe a bit closer to home. I'll take you on a date."

"A date? Like a proper date?"

"Yep. And one that isn't quidditch practice, either." He winked.

Conny blushed. "Er… ehem, that sounds great. Owl me?"

"Every day, if you want." He leaned in closer, and their lips met in a bashful kiss. Az's grip on her hand tightened and he swung their joined arms side to side, smiling slightly into the kiss.

"Your dad is watching." He whispered.

Conny broke away immediately, her face going bright red. Oh no. There'd be a lot to answer for. "I've got to go."

"I'll see you?"

"Of course you will. Have a good holiday!"

"You too!" He waved her away and she jogged over to David, who was looking a mixture between shell-shocked and disapproving. He glared over at Az, as if sizing him up and determining his suitability. Conny cleared her throat at him.

"Er, hi, daddy."

"He's a Slytherin." David said.

"He's lovely. And he writes poetry."

"Poetry?"

"Yes, daddy. Don't stare, it's rude, and you're making him uneasy." She grabbed her father and led him towards the barrier between the platform and the muggle world.

"You've been busy." He noted, taking her trunk for her. "Too much to put in a letter?"

"Why the inquisition? Didn't the school tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

"A load of second-years caught dragon pox. I was in quarantine for a week."

"Dragon pox! I thought we had herd immunity to that these days. Ah, well. Let's go, your mum'll be going spare waiting. We have a lot to talk about, Conyeri."

Conny gulped. At least her summer wasn't going to be boring.

-0-

In a castle, Lucius Malfoy came round, his head pounding. The room was empty, the child and the meddling students gone. He cursed.

He reached for his wand, which he'd dropped when he'd been hit. He pulled one of the fangs on the snake's head, which acted as its handle, and the secret lever sprang open the snake's mouth. From within, he pulled a crumpled photograph, tightly folded into a tiny square, of Malfoy Manor in Wiltshire.


End file.
